THREE THINGS WE RECOMMEND YOU SHOULD DO WHEN TRANSLATING YOUR WEBSITE

Almost certainly you have to take many things into consideration when you decide to translate your website.

A lot of relevant details have to be taken care of.

Here are three things we recommend that you should do when you start the whole process.

1. GET ADVICE FROM YOUR LANGUAGE PARTNER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Your language partner is more than an expert in the translation of your website.

Your language partner has deep and extensive experience in knowing how to manage the entire process – from start to finish:

  • What preliminary considerations and actions are a must BEFORE you commit yourself to the translation of your project?
  • Which processes are relevant and which processes can be omitted?
  • What technical details have to be taken care of before you can begin?
  • Which cultural aspects need to be taken into consideration before you begin?

    • HINT: If you are unsure about where you should start or which questions you need to ask your language partner, then download this checklist:

    “Things you need to be clear about when translating your website”

    2. INCLUDE YOUR MARKETS IN THE PROCESS

  • How should you act in the different markets?
  • What similarities and differences can you identify in relation to your native market?
  • How will you deal with these? Will you ignore them, or will you adapt your activity to suit them?

    • A practical example:

    Do people use online shopping sites, or do they use apps to shop?
    In some areas in the Chinese market, people use apps to shop.

    What do other companies do? Read our customer cases here:

    Kamstrup A/S – Viemose DGS – Firtal Distribution ApS

    3. DO THE PREPARATORY WORK AND AVOID MOVING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

    Analyse your current situation – map out your starting point

  • What is the status of our current website?
  • Are we satisfied with the texts in our primary language?
  • Are the relevant pages SEO-optimised in the primary language?
  • Is our website already translated into other languages?
  • Is the content uniform in all languages? (Must it be uniform?)
  • Do we know the quality of the different language versions and are we satisfied with them?

    • Clarify your options

  • Do we have sufficient internal resources to carry out the task? Can we carry out parts of the process ourselves? If so, which parts?
  • Which sub-tasks will/must we outsource? What type of partners are available?
  • Will we collaborate with several different agencies? Or will we find a main project manager?

    • Set your goals

  • What result do we want from the translations of our site?
  • Shall it be a copy of our main site?
  • Will we adapt the content or layout for the new markets?
  • Do the different language versions of the website have the same purpose? Or is there a difference from market to market? Is the primary purpose sales, branding, generating leads or something else?

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