Translating a company’s website is very important and requires adequate planning and attention, after all, the translated content will reach new markets and people who may live thousands of miles from the location where the original message was developed. Since language is one of the deepest aspects of a people’s culture, communication takes on an extremely relevant role for the success of your business and for your company’s message to actually reach your brand’s consumer. That’s why the role of a translation goes way beyond simply and coldly transposing the message from one language to another; it also involves localizing the content considering the social, cultural and economic aspects of the target market. That’s when choosing the ideal website translator for your company becomes a factor that deserves your utmost attention! That’s what we’ll talk about in today’s article.
The website translator is the professional responsible for adequately adapting a message from one language to another, based on terminological and contextual researches on the subject at hand. The translator must fully master the languages that will be worked and, in the case of a high-visibility material, such as websites, it is indispensable to use a native translator living in the country to which the message is targeted. Believe me, this will make a huge difference for the final quality of the content, since translating is not only about the literal exchange of words; frequently, a website translator will need to adapt the text so that it is fluid and easy to understand when the local consumer reads it.
Searching for a native website translator
Before choosing a translation partner, you need to bear in mind that websites may and must be used to cause a good first impression on the users. No wonder they are considered the new shop displays of the modern world! After all, each people has its own cultural particularities, so what could be better than a professional experiencing these aspects of the target language, to provide a translation the reader can identify with. That’s why hiring a native website translator makes all the difference.
However, if you have no idea where to find this person, how about getting to know a high-performance translation company? These companies have a base of website translators categorized by nationality, language and even by specialization areas, which helps – a lot – to allocate the best resources for each project or, even, to allocate the project to multiple resources in cases of urgent deadlines or unforeseeable situations.
It is important to point out that the translators who work for these agencies are selected through a recruiting, screening and selection system, which assures that they hire the best linguists on the market. In addition, the best agencies conduct ongoing evaluations of their partners by continuously checking the performance and consistency of the delivered works. That is, it is an assurance that you will find the ideal website translator for your project on a professional translation company!
But is hiring a good website translator enough?
Despite performing an extremely important role, the website translator is only one of the factors that will contribute to the success of the project. A premium-quality translation depends on other aspects, such as the ones we list below:
Involvement of professionals from multiple areas
It is usually said that a good translation process is intensive in relation to human capital. Therefore, in addition to the website translator, the project must also go through the hands of professionals who will help to minimize the chances of failures throughout the translation, such as: project managers, reviewers, quality control team, and experts in translation and tools and DTP. The project manager, for example, is the professional who will be in charge for all the administrative weight of managing the translation, making the bridge between the client, the agency and the translators allocated for the work, in order to assure that the final file is delivered on the agreed date. Among the main responsibilities of this professional are: validating the project’s scope; elaborating guidelines for the professionals involved with the work; planning the translation considering its scope, deadline and estimate; allocating expert professionals; monitoring the processes, resources and the evolution of the work; and interacting with the client to clear doubts and report on the status.
Structured process
A good translation agency will be based on a set of structured actions to meet the needs of your business. In addition to counting on the involvement of different areas throughout the project, they also offer a range of additional services that you will be able to choose to hire or not. The main ones are the following:
- Translation memory management: Translation memories are databases that store all segments already translated for each client, which may be sentences, paragraphs or even isolated terms. By managing these memories, previous translations can be reused in new projects, leading to lower costs, increased productivity, and terminological and structural consistency between translations.
- Glossary creation: creation of a personalized and up-to-date list of each client’s most complex or recurring terms. Elaborated exclusively for each company, this material helps to ensure a standardized terminology between projects and it also gives agencies independence in selecting the website translator.
- Elaboration of style guides: it is conducted from the definition of the rules and criteria that make up a company’s communication language style. It is designed to meet the expectations of each client with regard to translated materials, unifying criteria, expressions and styles. As well as the Translation Memory and the Glossary, the Style Guide assures the freedom to choose the translator and the linguist quality of your material, regardless of the partners who work on the project.
- LSO (Language Sign-Off): the navigability and user experience on your website will determine your success or failure metrics. That’s why a good website translation should help maintain the interest and browsing time rates seen on the original site. An additional service that may contribute to this is the LSO, an activity that consists of simulating the end user’s experience before the material is published, in which a website translator who is a native on the target language analyzes the translated content applied to the client’s website, aiming to validate it in the context where it will be used. This stage assures greater chance of success of the material in new markets and eliminates visual and formatting problems.
When hired, these services help streamline the process, generating savings for the client over time. In addition to the additional services, it is also important to evaluate others aspects of a translation company. We will list some aspects to which you must pay attention:
IT infrastructure and software use
Did you know that the use of some tools may assist the website translator to perform their work quickly, safely and efficiently? This is the case, for example, of the translation tools, widely known as CAT Tools. That’s why, when hiring a translation agency, you should make sure it uses those resources and, in addition, has a robust infrastructure, to assure the reliability of its data. Give priority to translation partners that use backup systems for the files during the entire process.
Know-how
A partner with know-how in website translation will certainly understand how much properly translated and localized content can influence your brand’s image and your sales success. They will know, for example, that spatial sizing is one of the points to pay special attention on this kind of project, given that a text translated into another language may significantly increase or decrease in size. In website translations, the translated content shall be adapted taking this into consideration and, thus, assuring the visual identity of the original version.
System Integration
Any tool that makes the process more efficient will certainly lead to a better solution for the client. Leading translation agencies are able to integrate their services with their clients’ systems, according to the specific needs of each one of them. This integration usually runs via API (Application-Programming Interface), that is, through a set of information that allows two different platform systems to interact automatically. This is a resource that can make it much easier for companies that have or want to have a website translated into several languages, because any update can go straight from the translation tools to the website.
Why you should translate your website as soon as possible
After understanding the factors to be taken into consideration when choosing a website translator, it will be easier to proceed with the translation of your company’s website into other languages, right? Also, it is very important that you do it as soon as possible, since, as we have said in the beginning of this article, websites are the new shop displays of the modern world.
It is very likely that your company’s website is the first point of a contact a customer will have with your brand, and it is indispensable that this moment offers a good experience for the user. In addition, researches indicate that 75% of consumers prefer to buy products and services in their native language.
Then, wherever your target audience is, it is very important that you are also present and, mainly, that you know how to communicate with it. If your company wants to become relevant in other markets, and to be found and to captivate foreign consumers, certainly a website translator homologated by a high-performance translation company will be able to help.
Before choosing a vendor, remember: a well executed translation service will reflect directly on your company’s business, offering positive results, just as a translation with inferior quality may impact the results negatively. That’s why your projects must involve qualified professionals, specific technologies and a clearly structured process in order to assure the final quality of the work, which is the specialty of professional translation companies, mainly those focused on meeting the needs of the corporate market, offering a premium translation.
Want to learn more about the world of website translations? Then, we recommend an article in which we answer the most frequently asked questions about website translation. Enjoy your reading!
About Netwire
Founded in 2000, Netwire is a multilingual solution enterprise that provides translation and localization into any language in the world. With robust infrastructure involving state-of-the-art technologies and the best professionals in the field, Netwire ensures high volume processing at high quality standards with quick turnover, precise control and project management, rigorous selection of native translators in every corner of the world, rapid learning of client preferences, secure and real-time data storage, information traceability and on-time delivery of the final material.
This solid foundation underlying Netwire’s services ensures a superior level of quality over other translation agencies in the market. In the past five years alone, the company processed over 110 million words, delivering an average of 400 projects per month. This experience has increasingly awakened the interest of global brands that comprise its portfolio of clients and positioned Netwire as the ideal company to meet any translation demand. Request an estimate via website or by telephone and guarantee the best solution
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