Website localization is the process of adapting a website, web store, or landing page for new markets through both technical and linguistic modifications. While internationalization (a pre-localization step) often doesn’t result in any external alterations, localization does involve technical, visual, and text modifications on the website. The translation of the text content into other languages is only one part of a complex process.
The Benefits of Localizing a Website
with Kenaz Translation Agency
Why Localize a Website?
The Internet has connected computers across the world and material digitization has helped accelerate information sharing. For several decades now, this phenomenon has been known as the “information economy.” One of the biggest myths of the information economy — and the world-wide-web — is that any company can become global by simply creating a website. Of course, the website will be available across the globe but will people be using it? Any information is useless if you can’t understand it.
Although millions of people are learning English, they won’t necessarily use it when they are shopping. You can wait for the world to speak your language, or learn the world’s languages.
Translation is not an afterthought anymore. It has now become your competitive advantage. Translation completion times, quality, and cultural appropriateness determine whether your websites, mobile apps, products, services, and company as a whole will succeed in the new markets. Take a moment to consider how a company that fails to support various languages in a market where most competitors do will compare to its existing customers and prospects.
So, what languages should one support?
Your language portfolio should align with the company’s global development strategy. However, there are ten major global languages into which the vast majority of websites are localized: English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Italian, and Korean. This list should not be disregarded as Internet users across the world are accustomed to seeing these languages listed on websites, and your language portfolio should include at least some of them.
However, before localizing your website, steps must be taken to prepare for entering international markets — a process known as internationalization. This process includes modifications to the website design and layout to ensure that various languages and character sets, currencies, language standards, and other regional requirements are supported. By investing time into this process and planning ahead, a company can save a significant amount of resources during the subsequent website and content localization for every market thereafter.
The list of questions that must be answered when planning website translation and localization is quite long, which can make it challenging to find the right answers and make the right decisions. There is good news, however: you won’t have to do it on your own. We will be happy to help you in this process. Over the years, we have helped many companies enter global markets. We will be happy to help you avoid others’ mistakes. Kenaz Translation Agency will be your trusted partner.
In our blog, you can also read an article on the ins and outs of translating a web store, as those kinds of websites usually need to be approached differently, and learn how to promote your web store in a foreign country.
Website Localization Steps
Cost of Website Localization
Calculating how much a website translation costs is never easy. The page count, the volume of content, and the website’s source language and target languages will all affect the final price. One thing to remember is that, in many cases, when website translation cost estimates are requested, the website to be evaluated is only available online. It is virtually impossible to estimate the cost of translation and localization without website text files, text string exports, or an offline copy of the website.
If the client who would like to order a website translation has no files storing all of the content, it is possible to estimate, for instance, the translation of one or several pages. The client should have a general idea of how much content is on the website to be able to roughly estimate the total cost. Completing a translation will require exporting the content and preparing the files, which is why we recommend asking the developers immediately which formats are available for export. For regular landing pages, the entire contents can be copied into a text document to assess how much it will cost to translate the pages of such a website.
Supported File Formats
The content to be localized may be stored in a variety of file formats, such as .php, .html, .txt, .json, .xml, .csv, and more. In most cases, the data may be exported into one of those formats or copied into a .docx, .rtf, .txt, or .xlsx file.
One of the most popular and convenient file formats for localization is XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) — a standard of localization data sharing based on the XML markup language. It is currently supported by many systems and platforms. Exporting content into this file format is preferred as it simplifies the process substantially.
