At Semantix, we specialise in website translation services and tools that help businesses adapt their content for new audiences. Based on our experience undertaking thousands of translation projects in hundreds of languages daily, we’ve put together this guide to share:
- What website localisation is.
- How to localise your website.
- Seven things to consider in the process.
What is website localisation?
Website localisation is the process of translating and adapting a website’s contents to match its audience’s local needs and preferences. It can involve:
- Expressing website text in the audience’s native language.
- Pricing products in their local currency.
- Showing images of objects central to their culture.
Localising your website makes it more user-friendly. For instance, reading your content will be a breeze if it’s displayed in their native language.
Users can also easily understand a product’s price if it’s shown in their local currency. No currency conversion mental sums needed!
The result of providing this good customer experience? According to McKinsey, you could improve customer satisfaction by up to 20%. And sales by up to 15%, too.
If visitors can interact with your brand through multiple channels, you’ll need to localise these as well to facilitate a smooth omnichannel customer journey. Think email, social media and even mobile apps, for example.
But localising these channels are topics for another day. For now, let’s focus on the process of localising your website, plus things to consider as you do this.
How to localise a website
Here’s our suggested workflow for localising a website:
- Identify the web pages to localise: List the pages you intend to show the local audience.
- Strategise how you’ll localise these web pages’ content: For example, will translating their text be enough? Or, will you need to rewrite it entirely to fit the local context? You may also need to source for new, culture-specific images the local audience can relate to.
- Map out the project timeline: Set realistic timelines for when you’ll complete each stage of the localisation project. Allow for buffer time in case some work takes longer than expected.
- Invest in the appropriate tools: The right tools can optimise your localisation efforts to help your project go smoothly. It might even take less effort. Tools worth investing in include a project management tool, a translation management system and an automated translation tool. Terminology management software might also be helpful – 67% of professionals surveyed by Forrester for its Q1 2024 Enterprise Localisation Technologies Tech Tide Survey reported gaining positive business value from it.
- Establish a feedback process: Select the stakeholders who will oversee the localisation process, and check that the localised content is on-brand and accurate, at every step.
- Optimise your website for multilingual searches: Help search engines serve searchers the localised pages that match their language preferences. One method is to implement hreflang tags, which indicate to search engines your pages’ intended language and region.
- Create a website translation brief: Prepare a document that provides your translation team with information like the localisation project’s goals and the source and target languages. This helps them produce translations that meet your requirements.
- Translate your pages’ text: This is typically a big part of the localisation work. We’ll cover various translation methods in more detail below.
- Prepare alternatives for media and other website features: If certain images aren’t culturally appropriate for your new audience, find suitable replacements. You may also need to set up your website for taking payments in the audience’s local currency.
- Upload the localised website content: Instead of importing the content manually, look into using an automated translation tool that can populate web pages with your translated content for you.
- Publish the localised website: Before doing a public rollout, have a small test audience review the website and provide feedback on it. You can then adjust the website’s content, as needed, before it goes live.
7 things to consider when localising a website
Establishing a localisation workflow gives you a systematic framework for localising your website.
Now, put together an action plan for these seven matters we’ll share next – we’ve seen many localisation projects run into difficulties when clients overlook them.
1. Translation methods
There are two main translation methods:
- Machine and artificial intelligence (AI) translation involves using computer software to translate text quickly and relatively accurately. These can be dedicated translation software, or non-specialised AI tools like ChatGPT.
- Human translators translate text by hand. Here, the translation quality can vary significantly depending on whether the translator has the relevant industry experience for expressing technical terms in the target language accurately. While using human translators is generally more costly and time-consuming than relying on machine translation, the resulting translations may be more precise.
We find that using a combination of both methods results in the most cost-effective and highest-quality translations.
First, use machine translation to get a first draft of the translations. Then, have human translators review and polish these translations, focusing on especially important portions of text.
2. User experience
While not the best practice, translators often translate web content out of context.
In other words, they typically receive a chunk of text extracted from a web page. They then translate this text without knowing how it’ll be used on the page.
As a result, when the translation is added to the web page, it may not fit into the available page space. This leads to on-page formatting problems that affect the user experience (UX).
A simple example is button text that becomes very long after translation, causing the button to lengthen as well. The button may then look visually unappealing, and even protrude into other page elements. Not ideal at all.
To prevent UX issues like these from cropping up, translate content with as much context as possible. For instance, give your translator:
- Screenshots of your web pages’ designs.
- The dimensions of the space their translated text will go.
This way, the translator can adjust their translations to account for these constraints.
Alternatively, use a website translation tool that can display translations in context. GlobalLink Web offers an in-context editor that shows how your translations will appear on the page. The editor also lets you update your translations directly without switching to a separate editing interface.
3. SEO
Another common mistake is doing search engine optimisation (SEO) only after the web page has been localised and is almost ready for upload.
That’s because while researching keywords at this late stage, you may discover your localised page’s target keywords have completely different search intents in the new market. So, most of the page’s content is irrelevant, and you need to redo it.
And all the effort you’ve put into creating the localised content so far? Wasted.
Start optimising your localised pages for search traffic early in the localisation process. For example, research keywords before you start translation work.
Plus, don’t neglect other essential multilingual SEO tasks like:
- Localising your pages’ URL slugs.
- Deciding whether to park your localised pages under subdomains, subdirectories or separate domains. The appropriate option depends on whether you want your pages to share authority, among other considerations.
Read these guides for more tips on SEO’ing your website as you localise it:
4. Tone of voice and style guide
A tone of voice and style guide provides instructions on your brand’s tone of voice and writing style. Having one helps ensure your content consistently reflects your brand’s personality. This is especially true if you have multiple people writing and translating your website’s content—all their output needs to align.
Some things to include in the guide are:
- Your brand’s tone of voice.
- Use of active or passive voice.
- Spelling preferences.
- Example sentences that meet (or don’t meet) each requirement.
And don’t forget: you’ll need a tone of voice and style guide for each target market. Having just one “universal” guide for all markets won’t help your messaging resonate with any of them.
You may even need multiple guides for each market if you’re producing content in different languages for it.
Some AI translation tools can reference your tone of voice and style guide when translating text. If you’re using such a tool, adapt the guide for your translation, review or editing prompts.
For example, write the guide’s requirements as clear, straightforward directives the AI tool can follow.
5. Terminology
Your localised content should consistently use the same product names and brand terminology throughout. By doing this, you maintain a coherent brand image. You also avoid confusing readers with different terms for the same things.
One method of managing terminology is to create a glossary spreadsheet with columns for terms and their translations. Alternatively, use a translation management system with automated terminology management features.
For example, GlobalLink Web saves your preferred translations for terms in a central glossary database. It also automatically updates these translations whenever they’re edited, so your team gets the latest translations immediately.
If you’re localising your website using an AI translation tool, look into preparing your glossary in an instructional format. This helps the tool reference it when translating text.
6. Website translation tools
Using the right website translation tool can help you localise your web content accurately, at scale and at a value-for-money price point.
Our GlobalLink Web automated translation tool provides a comprehensive suite of features for translating website content and managing your translations. Install the tool by pasting one line of code into your web pages, and the tool will identify content on your website and send it for machine or human translation, depending on your preference.
After translation, use the live preview tool to review and refine the translations before approving them for use
GlobalLink Web is packed with features for making translation work more efficient. These include automated terminology management for maintaining translation consistency, and shared translation memories for effortlessly reusing past translations
