The World Wide Web: Globalizing Your Site: EnSky Article
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Many of our clients come to us, at one point or another, and ask how much it would cost to translate their web site from English to another language. While the Internet has lowered the barriers of entry into international markets, customers still prefer content presented in their native language, and will choose a company that provides localized content over one that does not. Providing local content for global customers can provide your company with a powerful competitive advantage, if done correctly.
Definition of Terms
First, let's define some terms. Globalization is the process of making sure the code behind your web site is able to handle localization. For example, you might need to ensure that your database can properly store and manipulate text with European or Asian characters. Also, different languages sort text differently, and that issue might need to be considered.
Localization refers to the process of adapting the content of your site for your global markets. Remember that a market is not synonymous with a language. The expectations of Spain and Mexico could possibly be very different, even though Spanish is spoken in both countries. Translation is the biggest component of the localization process, but it is important to make sure that content is appropriate and culturally correct for the target market. The same rules of marketing apply, just in a different language.
The basic difference between globalization and localization is that globalization refers to architecture and coding issues, while localization refers primarily to changes in content.
Globalization Issues
There are a number of technical issues that can trip you up when it comes time to globalize your site. Your site needs to have a flexible method of formatting a number of items, according to market specific methods. Money is an obvious example of this; if your backend ordering system can only handle American dollars, your company will have a hard time running a global e-commerce site. Other items that differ from country to country are date and time formats, and address formats (not all countries have states, and postal codes are often very different than American zip codes).
Another problem is text-expansion. When English is translated into other languages, the amount of text often increases, which can cause problems for text that is embedded in graphics. The overall design of the site needs to be flexible enough to accommodate text of differing sizes and widths. If anything, this is a good argument against using text embedded in graphics, whenever possible.
Even more complicated issues arise whenever you collect information from users with HTML forms. Care must be taken to preserve the non-English characters from the user's browser, to the database, and back again.
Localization Issues
For localization, most organizations will need to retain the services of a company that specializes in providing translation and localization services. Several of these companies are listed in the "More Information" section of this article (please note that vendors are listed for informational purposes only and no endorsement is implied).
You may be wondering about the machine translation (MT) services available either for free on the web or commercially. Typically these services are great if you need a short snippet of a web page translated, but often the results are laughable (try translating an English phrase to another language and back again). Many English phrases and figures of speech are converted very literally by computer translation programs, destroying the original idiomatic meaning in the process. Machine translation has its place, but not for professional web localization.
Typically, a translation service will charge a set price per word. This includes all the "invisible" text on your site, such as alt text for images, meta tags, page titles (so foreign visitors will be able to find your site through search engines), as well as words embedded in graphics. EnSky acts as the facilitator between our clients and the localization company, providing translators with the source text and creating the new localized versions of the pages.
Once the localized version of your site is launched, it is imperative that you keep the localized version of the site synchronized with your English-language version. Once again, the goal is to present a positive image of your company to your global customers. Outdated content creates a negative impression. It is important to budget for maintenance at the beginning of a globalization project, as you will likely need to have translation done on an ongoing basis.
Recommendations
Quality is paramount when planning a globalization program. The quality of your localized content should be as high as the quality of your English-language content. Anything less and you risk insulting your international customers, exactly opposite of your intent! This means you must go through the process of re-engineering your site for globalization, and have your content professionally translated and reviewed. If your company does not currently have the resources to do a quality job, we recommend holding off on a globalization program. It is better to concentrate on maintaining a quality English-language site.
We also recommend that companies start by localizing the site for only one market, preferably in a western European language such as French, German, or Spanish. Avoid starting with an Asian language, such as Chinese or Japanese, because Asian languages run into complicated font issues. Start with one market to become comfortable with the process before trying to take on multiple localization projects.
More Information
Localization Vendors:
- http://www.fxtrans.com/
- http://www.welocalize.com/
- http://www.lionbridge.com/
- http://www.ilangs.com/
Resources:
