Website Translation Isn’t Just About Language Translation

In today's multilingual, international marketing landscape, you need to translate your messaging to reach global customers. That's a given.

But how do you create and deploy translated content without burning out internal teams or duplicating and overlapping efforts? How do you make sure your eventual translation solution is scalable for the long haul?

The key is communicating the end goals for your multilingual site to every part of your team—and then leveraging today’s best-in-class technologies to eliminate operational complexities and produce the end results you’re looking for.

Here’s what that can look like.

Manpower Alone Isn’t Enough

When the need for translation arises, the first question on most minds is: Who’s going to do the work?

It's a logical first step. Translation requires people. But if you just leap into the thick of it without a plan, you'll soon be overwhelmed by the work.

Translation requires people.

Unfortunately, adding more people isn’t the long-term solution, because website translation isn’t just about language translation. It involves a whole host of other activities and decisions, such as:

• Ensuring your CMS rapidly deploys new and updated content across all markets
• Running QA to guarantee the translated content fits your brand voice, style and messaging
• Handling content on third-party apps, multimedia content and content in other channels beyond your flagship website
• Optimising translated content to perform well in local search engines

Knowing how translation spans your organisation's efforts and decisions is an essential step to ensuring you choose a solution that minimises efforts and costs while maximising bottom-line results.

Begin with Your End Goals in Mind

You've probably heard the expression, "Begin with the end in mind." That's as true of planning for effective, revenue-building content translation as it is of anything else. There are specific, defined results that your website-and all your marketing channels-need to achieve.

Those goals don’t change when you translate your content into other languages. In fact, great translations fit with and further your organisation's bottom-line goals.

When you're clear on your big picture marketing goals, you'll be better equipped to build consensus on a translation solution that meets your needs. Clearly communicating end goals helps you:

• Justify the investments that need to be made in a great translation solution
• Communicate better with teams such as IT, who will need to support the process
• Ensure a coherent approach to translation across all divisions of your business
• Gain upper-level management and colleague buy-in on the value of a great translation solution

It’s Up to Marketing to Lead the Way

The marketing vision of a business rests in the trusted hands of its marketing team. In an ideal organisation, that vision drives all the marketing decisions being made-including how best to translate and localize content for global customers.

When marketing takes the lead by communicating the big picture, in-house teams like IT are better equipped to choose the right technical solutions for your organisation's bottom-line needs. It's easier to design and implement an effective translation strategy that is scalable and future-proof when marketing leads the way.

What Great Translation Technology Looks Like

Today’s best website translation services take a digital-first approach. Digital-first agencies drastically reduce the technical and operational complexities—and the costs—of website translation. As a result, you get straightforward solutions that make it easy to implement translated content, without burdening in-house teams.

Today’s best website translation solutions take a digital-first approach.

You'll recognise world-class website translation solutions when you see:

Technology Agnostic

The best solutions operate independently of your website’s back-end systems and support all underlying technologies and code.

Fully Turn-Key Solutions

Great translation vendors handle 99% of the work, so your in-house teams can focus on big-picture tasks.

TranslationGreat vendors offer APIs and translation user interfaces that simplify the process of translating online and offline multichannel content.

Redesign / Re-platform Ready

A great translation solution can seamlessly adapt to any CMS, software and hardware changes you make, without glitches.

24/7 Support

The best vendors are there for you whenever you need them, guaranteeing you get localised content when it's most convenient for you and your customers.

The Bottom Line

Great website translations that drive customer response in global markets start with your marketing team.

Communicate clear marketing goals across the organisation, especially when it comes to translation needs, and let those goals guide you-and your translation partners-to a translation approach that makes the most of your content, every time.