Localizing a website is a hectic and extensive deal. Translating and localizing a website according to the language needs of the new target audience asks for real practices. A website in a foreign language cannot appeal to foreigners or sell products on its own. In order to tempt a new audience you as a business owner has to take your business one step forward. It includes translating the content and localizing your products for the audience which you decide to target. Translating the content helps in improving the overall business situation. However, better is to localize the content and present it in other languages and make adjustments to fit the need of the target audience. Once you have a properly localized website you can market your products well and can offer and showcase your products better to audiences all over the world, leading to better revenue generation.
An effective website localization solution hence should be your priority and for that, you should be conducting research as it is a detailed process and requires experts to contribute.
What is Localization?
Localizing the website is necessary to go global, have a wider reach, and generate more revenue. You have to communicate about your business in a consistent message across all geographical places. This also involves modifying and adapting the regional changes and extracting the translated content as per your localization needs. Sound and strong localization tools are important to implement in the process.
Types of Website Localization Tools
Before proceeding further, you need to understand the common types of website localization tools
- Self-translation services
- Translation services
- Automatic website localization software
Self-Translation Services
This type of website localization is quite familiar to all. This involves translating the content by copying and pasting the paragraph into an online translator. The user first has to select the source language and target language. The platform of an online translator then comes up with the translated version of the text and this way presents the multilingual version of the websites.
All the big translators such as Google translate, DeepL, translator, and bing Microsoft translators are a few examples of self-translation services.
Translation Services
The translation services unlike the self-translation require human translators to translate the content. The self-translation relies on the algorithms to translate the given content however in this type of localization professional human translators perform the translation tasks.
The translation service providers can help in
- Translation of documents, websites, software, and others
- Proofreading the website copy
- Automating the translation of large volumes of text through API
- Providing the translation of the video subtitles, multilingual chatbots, and google Ads translations
Automatic Website Localization Software
Website and software localization services have to pay special attention to detail. These practices demand experts in the team to execute the translation services in a better way. This website localization tool includes all the above types and a lot more. As it is a complete translation solution so it contains all the features that one could need to localize the website in one place.
Automatic website localization further has these features.
Machine translation post-editing
Once the text undergoes machine translation or professional translators translate the content, the translated content further goes for post-editing. The translation has to be edited to make sure that it is quality content and also goes well with the needs and preferences of the target market.
Glossaries
Setting a glossary is also part of this website localization tool. A glossary with the standard terms and their definitions allows the translators to produce a consistent and accurate translation. Different definitions of one term/phrase used throughout the project can bring inaccuracies in the content which might affect the quality of the translation. Also, other than website localization, language problems are also important to consider for the localization of the games. There are immense benefits of language games, however, the users can only make most of these when these are rolled out professionally and accurately.
Project Management Tools
Project management tools are inevitable for website and game localization services. The process of localization is hectic overall, and the tools are also similar which they use to localize the games and even software too. A team of experts from the team should manage the project and help with translation services. Project management features are significant to implement the right and appropriate localization strategies. The process often requires the team’s permission for the projects and facilitates collaboration in real-time so having a team with access to project management tools can contribute in a better way.
Translation Management System (TMS)
Translation management is an important part of the automatic website localization tool. These systems are imperative to organize and manage the translations and language problems fixed for a central database. Other than this the TMS can also help in the automation of the translation workflows using machine translation, for instance, to provide the translation and convert files to different formats.
Quality Assurance and Validation of the Processes
Quality is of foremost importance in any process. It can not be promised. It is significant to review the translation’s quality at the end. The main purpose of translating the content and localizing a business for a new audience is to get a wider reach and boost sales. Thus overlooking the quality can bring some issues which offend the people from the target market. Therefore, the content should be tweaked and tailored well enough, there should be proper proofreading and the expert linguists should have a final look before the translations are ready to be made public.
Conclusion
Website localization is a significant process to expand the business. The localization of the website asks for a lot of practices to follow. Also, before localizing your business it is evident to understand the process of localization itself and the common tools of localization. These are self-care translation, translation services, and automatic website localization tools. The automatic localization tool has further features to integrate for seamless localization.
