When it comes to website translation, choosing the right vendor makes all the difference. Many companies hesitate to switch away from traditional translation agencies, even though this decision typically results in:
- Extra effort for in-house teams
- Error-prone processes
- Delays to get in-market
- Unseen, added costs
Fortunately, it’s easier and more cost-effective than you might think to switch to a more technically-savvy vendor that offers efficient, advanced, swift translation solutions.
Let’s discover what this means for your business.
Switching Is Easier Than You Think
Working with a vendor that specializes in website translation is advantageous, but many companies hesitate to do so because they buy into some common myths about digital translation, such as:
Myth: It’s complicated and costly to translate a website, no matter what agency you use.
Reality: Actually, it’s simpler and more budget-friendly to use a digital-first agency. Legacy agencies can’t efficiently handle the technical complexities of website translation; they were never trained for it. And your in-house teams will end up with the costly, time-consuming burden of project management and technical development.
Myth: It’s safer to stick with a vendor you know.
Reality: It’s natural to feel loyal to your longtime translation vendor, but your bottom-line goals may demand a more digital-forward strategy—and a fluency in technical capabilities—than your vendor can provide.
Myth: Switching to a new translation vendor is too hard.
Reality: It's simpler than you may realise. With the right digital-first website translation agency, you’ll be in-market as fast or even faster than you’d expect—for some agencies, that’s as little as 30 days.
Myth: Digital-first vendors and traditional vendors offer the same services.
Reality: The best digital-first agencies offer fully turn-key solutions. You hand off the entire project; the agency does the rest—freeing your in-house teams to focus on what matters most to your bottom-line goals.
Do not buy into these myths. Digital-first translation agencies simplify website translation. Your on-going partnership will save you time, effort, and money.
Easily Eliminate Effort
You've made a significant investment in creating the best-possible website for your primary market. There's no need to repeat this process when you launch and operate localised sites.
Traditional translation agencies require that because they don't have the technical expertise to ease or automate the translation process. Instead, they lean on their customers to oversee the translation workflow, pulling personnel away from critical tasks, creating distracting-and costly-additional work.
This is not how website translation should work.
Easy Migration of Translation Memory
When you work with a digital-first agency, you can easily leverage and repurpose any existing translated content you’ve created with other vendors.
In fact, the best digital-first agencies make it effortless to migrate all your existing translated content—called translation memory—to their systems. This database of existing translations automatically reuses content you’ve already translated, at no additional cost. This saves time and effort.
And since you've already paid for the content, even if the translations were done by a different vendor, you can still use it in translation memory. This maximises your translation investment. Translate once, pay once, use anywhere-no matter who did the translation.
Translation Optimisation
When you make the easy switch to a technically-advanced website translation solution, you gain other immediate benefits.
For instance, these solutions allow you to instantly leverage your existing translations for multichannel content, to support your online and offline marketing efforts.
By providing user interfaces or APIs, great solutions enable you to access your translation memory at any time to localize:
- Social media posts
- Email campaigns
- Digital and print advertisements
- Educational PDFs
- Offline sales material
- Multimedia videos, audio, images and more
Previously-translated content is delivered at no cost. New content is translated typically within one working day.
Consider the Opportunity Cost
When it comes to your website translation solution, sticking with a longtime translation partner comes with long-term risk.
Legacy agencies' annoying, slow and costly workflows can generate major losses in market share and revenue down the road. Your competitors, which may use a technically-advanced website translation solution, will gain advantages you'll never have:
- Speed-to-market
- Rapid content updates
- Global brand continuity, thanks to speedy translations
- Perfect uptime during redesigns and re-platforms
- Reduced costs
- Near-zero effort at launch and on-going
Conclusion
In today’s ever-changing, fast-moving global marketplace, only businesses that leverage world-class translation solutions will survive.
The best translation agencies use advanced technologies to reduce operational complexity, smartly re-use your existing translated content, and seamlessly operate alongside your CMS and third-party services.
Making the switch is easier—and smarter—than you think.
Last updated on November 09, 2017
