Proxy Translation for Website Localization

Introduction

Leveraging proxy translation technology is another way to localize content for multilingual markets. Unlike APIs and connectors, the proxy translation approach operates independently of your CMS or technology stack. The best proxy translation solutions eliminate the technology and personnel challenges of localizing online content.

A proxy translation server uses the code and content of your website to continuously translate it for multiple markets.

Proxy systems perfectly preserve the website’s functionality, and automatically update and serve its translated content on a continual basis.

What is Proxy Translation?

Proxy-based technology separates the content from your origin website’s code in ways that—when combined with translation—deliver immersive, localized web experiences.

How does proxy technology work? A translation proxy server is between the end-user and your back-end system. We change your website’s content to its translated version and send the fully translated webpage to the multilingual user. This process happens instantly.

When a user chooses a language, the site asks the translation proxy to show the page in that language.

The proxy translation server gets the request for the translated site, sitting between the origin website and the translated website. The translation server asks your back-end system to show the code for the new page.

The proxy translation server then updates the language content while preserving the same look, feel, and functionality. The entire process is instantaneous and undetectable to the user.

The proxy technology does not alter or interfere with your primary site or its code in any way. It is simply the middleman for your content as the site switches languages.

What are the Dangers of Proxy Translation Technology?

Errors in Content Detection Affect SEO: Not all proxies are created equal. Some translation proxies cannot identify new content in complex apps, dynamic content, and embedded forms, making you susceptible to bleed-throughs. This creates an incomplete customer experience and can hurt their perception of your brand. This also impacts your SEO because it does not process local keywords and phrases.

Can’t localize non-web content: Translation proxy servers are web-based. You can’t use proxy for videos, print media. You need to localize these non-text assets using human translation, which requires you to run two or more localization workflows. MotionPoint is the best choice because its translation memory is free, so users can access their translated segments whenever they want.

Cost: Some translation technologies can be expensive, especially when there are large amounts of content. Additionally, any missed content requires human attention and a separate localization workflow. This makes translation proxy an unpredictable localization strategy in many situations. Some proxy technologies can save you on your translation costs.

Need a refresher on website translation? Learn more here.

Not All Proxies are Created Equal

While there are some serious pitfalls when you translate proxy, but that isn’t always true with the right technology partner. With many proxy-based website translation solutions on the market, some are going to be much better than others. Many vendors claim to provide superior translation technology, but that’s all they provide—just the technology.

That’s not enough for most businesses. With these technology-only approaches, you must still implement, set up and operate the solutions on your own. This demands a large development team, along with the management of complex processes and workflows. Beyond the actual process of translating content, creating multilingual websites also require you to:

• Export translatable content from your back-end system
• Send this content to translators
• Oversee a complicated, error-prone translation workflow
• Uploading that translated content into your CMS instance
• Test for quality
• And more

Some companies, especially with limited IT or marketing resources, can’t monitor their translated sites constantly.

Ideally, you should seek out vendors with excellent effortless technology and website translation services.

Server-Based Proxies vs. Browser-Based Proxies

Server-based proxies offer distinct advantages over browser-based proxies, particularly in the context of SEO. Unlike browser-based proxies that manipulate content at the browser level, server-based proxies operate at the server level. This means that when using server-based proxies, the content is retrieved and modified before it even reaches the browser. This approach is beneficial for SEO because it allows for more comprehensive and precise content optimization.

While both server and browser-based proxy solutions aim to simplify tasks and automate processes, significant differences exist between them. Server-based proxies are generally more versatile and powerful for tasks like content scraping, data analysis, or security monitoring. They can handle a broader range of functions since they operate at the network level, making them more suitable for SEO professionals and developers who require deeper control and customization.

In contrast, browser-based proxies are simpler to set up and may suffice for basic tasks like bypassing geo-restrictions. However, their limitations become evident when dealing with complex SEO strategies that demand in-depth content analysis and manipulation. Therefore, for SEO purposes and more extensive automation needs, server-based proxies are often the preferred choice due to their ability to work at a higher level of the network stack, offering greater control and efficiency.

Advantages to the Proxy Translation Approach

Great Flexibility: Translation proxy servers allow you to customize the scope of work, translation type, number of languages, and level of involvement.

Adaptable: Proxies can be fully hands-on, fully turn-key, or a blend of both.

Secure: The best proxy translation solutions never collect data from end users.

Ease of Integration: The best translation proxy services let you change hardware or software or replatform without impacting site functionality. Proxy technology works with any CMS and programming language.

Scalability: Proxy solutions adapt to meet your translation needs, without requiring additional personnel. The proxy translates your origin website in as many languages as you wish, without creating additional work for your team .

Seamless Usability: Translation proxies work smoothly and instantly. Website visitors get a robust user experience, regardless of their preferred languages.

Multi-Device Capability: Translation proxy servers automatically adjust content appearance for laptops, tablets, and smartphones for a better user experience.

Cost Savings: Translation proxy reduces costs by using the code of your site to dynamically present translated content to global users.

Speed: The best proxies use advanced technologies to localize and launch websites in as little as 30 days. This includes in-context editing, which gives translators a live view of the website’s layout, to accelerate translation turnaround.

No Separate Websites: Because translation proxy servers use the code of your original website, you’ll never need to host and operate separate, localized websites.

Translation for Dynamic Content: Proxy technology translates third-party content, graphics, multimedia and applications. This improves user experiences at every point of their visit to your website.

An Innovative Approach: The Effortless Proxy Translation

Companies seeking a hands-free website translation solution should investigate vendors that deliver effortless translation proxy services. This method has the benefits of a regular proxy solution mentioned earlier. It saves time and consistently reduces expenses over time.

We manage the initial setup and ongoing operations at launch and continually as part of a service package. There’s no need to hire more employees or overwork your current ones. There is no learning curve to master website translation, and no worry about integrating a new CMS, platform or solution.

These solutions handle practically every aspect of the website translation and process and its operation, including:

• Detecting and queuing content for localization, translation, editing, approval and launch typically within one business day.
• Website operation, including uptime, software patches and installation
• Project management by dedicated teams that oversee every facet of the website translation project

Have a closer look.

Technology Configuration

The effortless proxy based localization approach removes the burden of configuring and managing multilingual websites from your IT team. You don’t have to…

• Configure plugins or connectors to export content from your CMS
• Manage the configuration and ongoing scalability of servers
• Parse, identify and extract translatable content in JavaScript files or Single-Page Applications

Dynamically Generated Content

Leading effortless proxy solutions can work with programming languages like JavaScript to identify and translate content that’s generated on-the-fly by product inventory applications, or single-page applications (for instance, applications that use AJAX requests to serve up dynamic content).

Translation proxy identifies specific details about a visitor, like their location, search history, cookies, or session data. It then sends these details to your site’s backend, allowing you to provide the necessary personalized content to that user.

For instance, the proxy will forward you a session. Then you can serve the user an appropriate product. The proxy shows the user the translated information in real-time.

Translation Workflow

When you work with an effortless proxy translation solution, you don’t have to…

• Manage a translation glossary and brand style guide
• Manually copy, paste and send translatable content from your CMS into spreadsheets for localization by internal or outsourced linguists
• Manage translation workflows, consistency and quality across multiple languages and channels
• Manage translation of multimedia and interactive applications
• Continually optimize content to reduce the number of words for translation

Your translation provider will manage the website translation workflow and ensure quality and consistency. They will maintain your brand’s unique translation glossary and style guide for every language and global market.

Quality Assurance

Proxy technology also saves you the time it takes to review, test and fix the UX of your multilingual websites. You don’t have to:

• Perform QA on multilingual sites
• Monitor for content updates
• Review translation quality

Easy proxy solutions test your translated website to mimic the user’s journey from navigation to conversion. They ensure your new page design is consistent, your conversion funnels work, and customers can properly access any secure areas. The best solutions guarantee the usability of localized third-party applications, too.

They also examine the site to make sure your page designs look great, your conversion funnels work and customers can properly access any secure areas. The best solutions guarantee the usability of localized third-party applications, too.

Business-Boosting Website Optimizations

Effortless proxy website translation services also offer many business optimization capabilities that can help increase your business’ success in multilingual markets:

Instant Language Detection: Look for website translation solutions that offer intelligent language-detection capabilities. This ensures that multilingual visitors find the right localized version of your website, every time. This multilingual “welcome mat” delivers benefits such as:

• Dramatically improves user experience and conversion rates by eliminating friction caused by manual language-switching, while improving traffic to global sites
• A powerful algorithm automatically determines user preferences, such as language and country
• The visitor won’t appreciate the website’s original language
• Supports other features, such as cookie law compliance

On-Site Search Enablement: Great vendors offer localized on-site search capabilities:

• Improves conversion rates by enhancing a website’s on-site search in other languages
• Leverages your site’s existing search technology to generate optimal results
• Monitors customer activity and site performance to ensure the on-site search configuration remains accurate and relevant

International SEO Keyword Research: Great website translation vendors perform SEO keyword research in any language, for any market, in every industry—with no effort required from you.

• Includes synonym-based searches, so visitors can more easily find CenturyLink’s localized sites
• Increases organic search traffic

URL Translation: Great solutions also translate your site’s URLs with no customer-side involvement required.

• This helps pages rank higher in search engines for non-branded keywords, boosting organic traffic in regional search engines
• The new translated URLs incorporate strategically important search terms that local markets commonly use.
• Website visitors can follow the URL navigation path in their own language, improving the user experience
• The best vendors supports URL translation for all languages (including those with non-Latin characters, such as Russian, Chinese and Arabic)

Global Sitemap Management: This effortless capability automatically sets up and updates multilingual versions of your origin website’s sitemap.xml files, and layers in hreflang tag attributes.

• This improves international SEO by providing the right mapping signals to search engines
• Intelligently organizes and packages all localized website URLs
• Reduces effort for customer-side SEO analysts by removing constant manual updates to language referencing tags in source code
• hreflang tagging informs search engines about which language is available a specific page. The search engine can serve that result to users searching in that language.
• Ensures international search engines are displaying the correct localized version of a site

Multimedia Translation: The best providers of effortless solutions also localize multimedia content for use on a website or other channels.

• This includes translating images with text embedded within the image, or images that have a “text overlay”
• We provide video dubbing or subtitles, as well as translatable content within the video such as images within the video
• Translation of audio files
• Animations that contain translatable content

Offline Document Translation: Effortless solutions often serve your entire enterprise, including translating non-digital content.

• Look for capabilities that support localizing offline documents for sales material, marketing material, store signage, training material, support documentation, etc.
• Great solutions ensure their linguists are native speakers of the language they’re translating the content into
• Translation process follows ISO 17100 and 9001 procedures

Other Value-Added Features

Site and Keyflow Monitoring: Smart technology monitors your localized website’s keyflows for functionality issues. Our engineers will notify you of any errors and correct them.

Customization: You can customize website code and content for different markets. This includes showing local support information, using different units, displaying local currency, and offering market-specific deals.

Ongoing SEO: Deployment of localized sitemaps greatly improves search rankings. Special hreflang implementation ensures the proper translated version of your website appears in multilingual users’ search results.

Customer-Aligned: Many vendors try to maximize your translation spend. The best easy solutions help you succeed internationally, adding languages and expanding your global reach effortlessly.

Read more about website translation in our ultimate guide to website translation.