Are you thinking about translating your website?

Whether you want to respond to the newly developed consumer demands or expand onto international markets, you know that a multilingual presence is essential.  (Just in case you need any convincing, you can read about why it is a good idea in my blog post here.)

Choose your target market wisely

Before you even start looking for a translation service provider, you need to know your target market.

Using tools such as Google Analytics will help you determine which countries and languages will bring you the most sales. For a more comprehensive list of tips on identifying markets and the best product-market fit I recommend this article by Nataly Kelly, VP Localisation at Hubspot, where she says:

“You want to ideally choose markets where you’ll have a high degree of success. This means you want countries where you can achieve product-market fit — but ideally, without having to make too many significant adjustments to your product or your go-to-market strategy.”

What is the difference between translation and localisation?

When launching your website on a new market, you will actually need to “localise” it, not translate it. So let’s look at these two terms? What’s the difference and does it matter?

Translation will transfer the meaning of your content into another language.

But what is localisation?

The term “localisation” actually comes from the term “locale”, which refers to the combination of the language a user speaks and the place they are from. So, in other words, it is making something appropriate for a given locale. It deals with the technical needs of each locale such as postal addresses, currency, pricing, units of measurement. It also means culturally adapting the text, making it appropriate for the target audience. For example, if your website is in American or British English, your CTA (call-to-action) will probably be too firm and compelling in France, where a subtler and softer message is necessary.

How to translate a website – 7 practical tips

Finally, you are ready to embark on the website translation journey and you want to entrust your content to a professional linguist. Now what?

Here are my 7 tips for translating a website (or rather, localising it):

1. How will we work together?

What will be our processes and tools?

Word or Excel files

If you create all the new content for the website in MS Word, this will mean a rather simple process for the translator. They will process the files in Word or in their CAT (computer-aided translation) tool for consistency purposes and send them back in the same format. However, (a BIG “however”), this means that your web design team or firm will have to insert all the bilingual content into your page templates. Then your QA staff will have to proofread every single source page, and the translator can proofread every single target language page. This is laborious and time-consuming. Do not run the risk of having the words translated, rather than the overall message. Make sure that you share the context with the translator.

With a plugin such as TranslatePress we can immediately see how the translation fits on a page.

Translating directly in a CMS

If the website is in WordPress or Squarespace, it can be helpful to use a plugin like TranslatePress (picture above) or WPML. The translator can work in the front end of the website and no one has to paste text. We can immediately see how the text fits on the page. The French language is longer than English and this method can quickly flag any placement or font and box size issues. It saves time but can also add another technical layer to the project, so you need to be comfortable with it.

Complex releases

If you want to run your website in several languages and manage multiple updates, a proper localisation management tool will be a worthy investment (such as Lokalise or Phrase). Not only you can see and edit your translated text in real time, directly in the front-end, but without it, managing the translation workflows in spreadsheets would be a logistical nightmare.

2. Who will proofread and QA your site?

Will the translator do it or do you have linguistic resources at your end?

If it is the translator, ask for the cost upfront. It may be a separate item on their quote, or it may be built in their hourly rate (check that). The entire site must be proofread before it goes live. QA is vital: if you think that having a typo in a document is bad, how embarrassing will it be if there are typos on your website for the whole world to see! Your top-notch products will not look professional. And do not think that only linguists laugh at language mistakes. The media is full of photos and articles, written by clients, about embarrassing goofs in museums, famous tourist attractions or on e-commerce sites.

3. Do you have a style guide or a glossary?

When you translate a website, it is important that the new language version carries the same appeal and style (e.g. friendly and relaxed or formal and professional). When we talk about formality, we also need to talk about inclusiveness. Consider your audience’s age, background and business environments. Deciding between the formal or informal “you” in certain languages — “vous” in French, “du” in German or “tú” in Spanish — will allow you to convey an inclusive, clear, and courteous style.

If a translator is part of your localisation team (e.g. working with QA staff on your site), sharing these guidelines and technical terms with everyone involved will help to keep the terminology consistent. And if you make further updates, next time these resources will make the website translation process faster and more accurate (not to mention the eternal gratitude from your chosen translator😊). You can find more details about style guides and glossaries in this article.

4. What about images?

They say a picture can be worth a thousand words. And it is true! In the era of digital marketing, imagery plays a part so important that it would be your loss to ignore it.

Firstly: are your images still appropriate for the culture that you are targeting? Your translator’s advice here can be crucial.

Make sure all images have appropriate translations and that they have been adapted to fit the local culture because they may carry different meanings. Additionally, links, headers, and titles should not break when users switch between languages, so including this in your QA process is vital.

5. What will happen after?

So, you have a new, shiny webpage in Spanish, French or Polish. Congratulations! Your multilingual website is likely (let’s hope!) to generate inquiries from people reading the site in languages other than the original.

What now?

How will you follow up on inquiries in other languages?

If you sell physical products, maybe this isn’t much of a consideration. A multilingual ordering interface will simply allow clients to place orders in their language that are then fulfilled like any other order. Even then, you may get questions from your potential clients about the technical details or features of your products. But what if your business is a hotel, a spa or a ski resort? What happens when you start getting reservation inquiries in French? Will the French website create a demand for French-speaking staff, and can you fill that demand? This is where continuous support and relationship with a freelance translator might help.

6. Prioritise

You received some quotes, but in the end you think you can’t afford a translator. Before you decide to quit and go with a free tool, consider some other options:

• Do you really need to translate everything? Maybe just a landing page will suffice.
• Can you prioritise the content to be translated?
• Can you send the content in chunks for translation rather than wait until the entire catalogue of products or online guides is available?

7. The magic word – SEO

Your freshly translated website needs to be visible and rank well with the international market audience. And for that, you can’t just translate the keywords into the target language. The keywords have to be researched for each market separately. Let’s look at an example:

An e-commerce portal ranks highly in English-speaking search engines for keywords: “gifts for her” and “gifts for him”. But, a word-for-word translation of these phrases might not give them good rankings on a French market, where web consumers tend to look for “cadeau pour femme” (gift for a woman) or “cadeau pour homme” (gift for a man).

Other techniques such as the hreflang tag, dedicated URLs, creating engaging metadata, and local market backlink building will also matter.

A skilled SEO translator, who not only knows the local culture, but has adequate training and experience in the SEO strategies, will be instrumental to the good ranking of your localised website.

A final note: machine translations are not going to get you very far

Please consider this before you go with a machine solution.

Language complexity can only be handled by a human.

Translation is not only about changing the words. It is about the overall message. Local idioms and cultural references, are equally important. And so far, in spite of huge progress in Neural Machine Translation, only humans can do… Click To Tweet

WordPress like TranslatePress will offer to integrate with automatic tools such as Google Translate and DeepL. While no human translator can compete with the machine speed, beware. Translation is not only about changing the words. It is about the overall message. Local idioms and cultural references, based on cultural and socio-economic factors, are equally important. And so far, in spite of huge progress in NMT (Neural Machine Translation), only humans can do this. For example, if your website copy contains slogans that rely upon a cultural reference, a joke, or an idiom in your native language, the translator will have to find an image in their native culture that has a similar effect.

References to sports are notoriously difficult: no one understands baseball outside the US or cricket outside the UK and the Commonwealth countries. The meaning will be totally lost unless it is reliably localised (adapted to the target culture).

Cultural adaptation cannot be done by even the most advanced NMT engine.

These are just some tips that you need to consider when you decide to have your website translated.  

Want to know more? Have questions?

Drop me a line or post your comment below.

(This is an updated version of a blog post originally published on 11/06/2020.)

Part 2: Best practices: how to localize your digital financial services and who can help you

The localization helps to build trust. But do you know how to get it right, and who can help you?

Welcome back to Part 2 of my series about localization in financial services. In Part 1 I set a bit of context: how the development of the digital financial services has changed the customer journeys and what challenges it has brought. Now let’s have a look at how localization helps to build that essential element of the client relationship—trust— and what the best practices are to localize your digital financial services.

That feeling of distance and unease when the person you talk to does not seem to fully grasp what you want to say… Can you relate?

We can all identify with the problem of a language barrier.

Of course, this can even happen with two native speakers of the same language, but it is far more likely in a scenario where they do not share the same language.

Trust is established through language.

In the interview given to the International Finance Magazine, the CEO and Founder of Monese, Norris Koppel, talks about the advantages of using a multilingual banking app and how well Monese is progressing in its target markets:

“There are many advantages to banking in your own language. We find that a lot of our customers find themselves travelling between countries for work, travel, study, or retirement. They want banking to be familiar. They don’t want to start again, in an unknown language, every time they arrive in a country. Banking in the language you feel most comfortable with is also very helpful in emergencies. If you have got to speak to your bank urgently because you’ve lost your cards, or you’ve noticed something unusual about your account, you want to do this in your native language.”

(https://internationalfinance.com/is-a-multilingual-app-really-an-advantage-in-digital-banking/)

People rely on banks to provide a safe haven for their money, they are placing faith in that institution’s ability to provide sensitive services, securely. A shared language helps to build trust.

Best practices to get the localization right

So how do you make that customer journey seamless?

Here is my take on it:

1. Localize all actions your user will take – on websites and apps alike:

• Translate the app or website content, of course, but also:
• Checkboxes, drop-down menus, forms,
• Static and dynamic content,
• Any interactive features such as chatbots, push notifications, SMS and IVR helplines, and
• Critical pages such as transaction pages and payment gateways, pages for login and management of account data.
• If you collect data from clients, the input and output (think digital documents) must be available in the client language
• Use high quality fonts to avoid any misreading characters. If misreading translates in money lost, your client will lose trust.

2. Translate your website

Website translation is no longer a “nice to have”. 75% of global customers want to conduct business in their preferred language.  (Read more about why this is the case in https://edittranslations.com/cant-read-wont-buy-why-should-you-localise-your-website/)

Translated content improves engagement and conversion rates. For example, for an American financial institution selling your services to Spanish-speaking clients, offering tailored, highly relevant content improves engagement and conversion rates. Hispanics have unique financial needs that banks can cater to, especially online in Spanish.

From the SEO perspective, the banking sites benefit greatly from this tailored content. In fact, they drive as much as 50% of traffic to a localized site.

The importance of trust in banking is not going away. This is money, after all. Getting the tone of voice right is crucial, and the objective should be the clarity of the message and building trust. Click To Tweet

3.  Hit the right tone when you talk to your clients

The new active population and fintech clientele were born in the 1980s and after. Some fintechs think that content and UX has to be informal, playful, and almost fun, as if all their clients were their “besties”. However, the importance of trust in banking is not going away. This is money, after all. Getting the tone of voice right is crucial, and the objective should be clarity of the message and building trust. Fun and cool, which many fintech companies want to embrace, is good, but not at the expense of understanding. What does work, on the other hand, is transparency, which in language terms will mean clear, jargon-free communication.

What an expert can do to help you localize your digital financial services or content

1. They will ask you detailed questions about the target audience and their needs (age, socio-professional profile, what problem are you trying to solve).

2. They will offer cultural consultancy.

For example, do you know that the level of informality or jokes may have to be substantially toned down or made subtler in French? Localization of digital banking projects are effectively transcreation when it comes to adapting the text.

Understanding cultural, legislation-related, and even political differences is key. Regulations have an impact on the linguistic choices. For example, the regulatory requirements will influence whether you can say “send money” or “send a payment” in Spanish, depending on the legal status of your organization. (according to Michael Reid, Nimdzi Researcher and Assistant Editor at MultiLingual Media)

3. They will aim to scope the project well according to your needs and budget. Here are a couple of examples:

Website localization – is it to be SEO optimised?

App localization – can you share screenshots or, if a new creation, mock-ups e.g., in Figma?

 Discuss your target market expectations: it is not just about the text and fonts in the app (and high-quality fonts must be used to avoid any misreading characters. Misreading => money lost => loss of trust).  It is also about localising the voice assistant, chat bots, SMS messages, push notifications, digital documents, transaction pages etc. A French client for example will expect all of this to be available in French.

4. They will ask about your post-release needs in customer service communication. Normally, users will be happy and expect just to use an app or website, but in case of a banking emergency or if something goes wrong, what language will they communicate in with the fintech’s customer service? Will the French website create a demand for French-speaking staff, and can they fill that demand? This is where continuous support and relationship with a freelance translator might help.

Key takeaways:

1. Clients expect the financial services to improve their everyday lives
2. The global context has increased the need for digital services, financial content, and advice.
3. The clients are Millennials and Gen-Z, who value independence, speed, and convenience, but the importance of trust is not going away.
4. Trust is established through language.
5. To localize your digital financial service, you need to consider all the actions that a user can take on your app and translate your website.
6. When talking to clients on a digital platform, be sure to hit the right tone of voice to come across as transparent and trustworthy.
7. Talk to an expert in localization in financial services who will help you with the process.

This is Part 1 of my series about how localization in digital financial services can help you support your clients in their language.

If you ask a translator: “How do you say x in y language?”, their answer will likely be: “It depends on the context”. Context is everything when it comes to translation.

The market information

To make the most of your international content, provide your translator with as much context as possible!

Brief them with the following:

👉 Target audience: who are you talking to? (age, nationality/culture, interests, income, position, etc…)

👉 Tone: conversational or formal?

👉 Purpose: what’s your CTA (call to action)? What do you want your audience to do?

👉 Knowledge: how much does your audience know about your product/service or the subject matter?

Actually, you should think about these before you even start creating your content, and then make sure your translator knows them, too. That way they will be more likely to convey the same message and reinforce your brand identity.

UI strings

Whether it is an app, a website or software UI, the translator is often handed a list of strings in an Excel file with little or no context.

If the app is still in development, the translator cannot interact with it and will be clueless as to how to render the string in another language.

Context will speed up the translation process. Ideally we like to see screen shots of UI screens. However, if you really cannot provide these, could you insert a comment in that Excel file you sent to give context?

👉What does the string refer to: a button? an error message? a list item?

👉If it is an error message, what is it about?

👉Is it a placeholder or a variable?

👉Any character limit?

Here is an example:

err_InvldEmail

Enter a valid [&1]

This message displays if an email address is not entered. The following information will populate for this message: [&1] = email address.

🤔Without this additional detail, the translator will ask you: “Enter a valid what?”

English is a wonderfully concise language, and nouns have no gender. In French, the article “a” will vary (un / une) and the adjective must match the gender of the noun.

In this case, the client provided the context: the missing word in the string is “email address.” In French it is feminine (une adresse e-mail), so now we can appropriately translate the string, leaving the placeholder, and be assured that the article and adjective agree with the noun that will be dropped into the string later.

Translation: Entrez une [&1] valide.

Et voilà.

Textual context

Textual context is really key when translating from a concise language such as English. Homonyms and homographs are very frequent yet depending on the context will be translated into completely different words in other languages. Words such as home, book or turn are perfect examples:

Book a call with us OR read our free book?

A turn of events OR a turn of a page?

Home page OR work from home?

Another source of confusion can be the use of nouns to describe other nouns. A single colour ink cartridge can mean a cartridge with 4 colours built in one (a single cartridge that will print in colour) or 4 individual cartridges (a cartridge containing a single colour). A good translator will always ask questions to clarify the context and will as for any reference material, especially when it comes to specialised terminology.

Situational context

Situational context refers to the factors and circumstances from the real-world environment which are affecting meaning. This is what is currently making machine translation so difficult to implement: it is hard to replace humans and their ability to live through communicative exchanges in real life, because the situational context involves the reasons why something occurs, references to the social, political or economic nuances.

A classic example is the form of personal address (“you” in English).

Who is talking? A millennial or a 19^th century book character?

With whom? A colleague, friend, a boss, a doctor or Le Président de la République?

Are they talking or writing?

Is this happening now or 50 years ago? 

When you adapt your product and your marketing campaigns to your target countries, you need to take into account their culture, traditions, and values.

Marketing experts will tell you that your specific message needs to get across to your audiences so that you can meet them where they’re at. The same is true for your international audience.

Work with a professional translator and localiser who will help you get your message across the borders.

And please: Provide your translator with context!

This video is a summary of 27 best practices shared by Nataly Kelly, VP Localization at HubSpot in her blog post on www.borntobeglobal.com. Following these guidelines will help make your content easier to localize.

Read Nataly’s brilliant advice and tell us about your localization journey!

Would you like to receive a copy of this video in a printable PDF form? Subscribe to my newsletter and it will land in your inbox!

“Can’t Read, Won’t Buy: 2014,” is a catchy title of a report published in April 2014 by an independent research firm Common Sense Advisory (CSA Research). The report contained findings of a survey of more than 3,000 global consumers in 10 non-Anglophone countries in Europe, Asia, and South America. Specifically, the research assessed online language preferences and their subsequent impact on purchasing decisions.

The key findings can be summarised as follows:

• 75% of consumers say that they want the products in their native language.
• 30% never buy at English-language sites, and another 29% rarely do.
• Across the 10-country sample, 56% either spend more time on sites in their own language than they do in English, or boycott English-language URLs altogether.
• Automotive and financial services are the products that consumers are least likely to buy if the website is not in their native language.
• Exactly half would prefer that at least the navigation elements and some content appear in their language, and another 17% strongly share that preference. This finding contradicts the conventional industry wisdom that you should localize everything or nothing.

Considering these findings, Common Sense Advisory Chief Strategy Officer and founder Don DePalma concluded that “there should be no question about localizing your website and product information if you want to sell more goods or services to global customers. Localisation improves customer experience and increases engagement in the brand dialogue. It should be a rigorously planned and executed business strategy for any company looking to grow internationally.” (https://csa-research.com/More/Media/Press-Releases/ArticleID/31/Survey-of-3-000-Online-Shoppers-Across-10-Countries-Finds-that-60-Rarely-or-Never-Buy-from-English-only-Websites)

So why should you translate your website and into which languages?

1. Do you want to increase your customer base?

Clearly the statistics presented above support the need to localise your content and products. If your online presence is only in English, you are missing on over 50% of potential buyers who will never purchase from you.

2. Do you do business abroad already?

If you provide your customers with product descriptions, shipping and payment options and transact in their language, they will feel more comfortable. As a result, they will come back to you for more business because they trust you. When a site is in a language that people don’t understand, they are more likely not to trust it.

3. What is your competition doing?

If they are not doing the same (yet) you can set the standards that others will have to follow, differentiate your brand and gain precious market share before everyone else.

4. Have you examined your website analytics?

Where does the traffic come from? Have you had global visitors who did not stop and buy?

The answer to these questions will also help you establish which languages you should select for your localisation project.

5. Do you attach importance to strong SEO?

You will multiply its rich benefits if you translate your content and carefully choose SEO-rich keywords that greatly helps when global users search in their preferred languages.

6. Tempted by a free solution such as Google Translate?

A penny-pinching attitude really does not pay off here. If you read Google’s own quality guidelines (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721306?hl=en&ref_topic=6001971 ) you will see that they penalise the search engine rankings of websites that use automated content. This includes “text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing”.

Conclusion

The best way to translate a website that converts and boosts your brand is by hiring a professional experienced translator who intimately understands the language and the local culture. You will avoid developing content that appears foolish and turns the potential buyers off. The media frequently publish the localisation horror stories where lack of cultural and linguistic understanding has led to a ridiculous result. You don’t want your customers to giggle at some stunning mistakes while you claim to deliver state-of-the-art solutions. Your great products and online flagship store deserve great translations.