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AB19946How do I have my website translated? 

Website translation isn’t much different from other types of translation project, and there’s no need for it to be complicated. Yet it is a special process that is best approached in a certain way?

What’s so special about it? Well, it’s not like a manual, a presentation, or a set of training materials. These are more or less fixed; they may be subject to updates, but not nearly on the level of a website. Your website is much more “alive”. You’ll be updating it regularly, almost constantly. This entails a long-term, collaborative effort between your creative team and the translation team. With some advance planning and scheduling, you can optimize the process on your end so that our team can give your site the very best treatment.

Tip 1 – Have your content as “locked in” as possible before starting translation. True for all projects, but especially here. If you’d like to change/add to your text after translation has begun, consider whether or not your changes can be made in a later update.

Tip 2 – Keep your team connected with the translators. Share your website’s update schedule with the translation team, and keep us in the loop. Set up a translation pipeline/workflow between the teams, and optimize it for effectiveness (we’d love to consult with you to make this happen). If you use a particular content management system, access to that would be welcome on our end!

Tip 3 – Don’t forget the small stuff. As you concentrate on the high-volume content of your site (articles, blogs, and the like), it can be easy to forget about your tags, categories and metadata. These have to be included in the content for translation, too. You may wish to have the translated site analyzed for SEO purposes before deciding on tags. This is another thing the translation team would like to know in advance.

Tip 4 – Mind your character counts. Your web design will only allow a limited amount of space for blocks of text. Apprise your translation team of any limits on word or character count. Consider delivering the text in a format that will help keep track of this. One of our most recent clients for website translation presented us with sourcetext for translation in a spreadsheet, with empty cells for the target language, and adjacent cells embedded with a function that counted the target characters as they were typed – a handy solution, and much appreciated by the translators!