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Website Language Translation - Useful Tips |
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Website Language Translation and Localisation. Here are some Useful Tips offered by Agostini Quality Translations thanks to the experience acquired during 15 years of providing Language Translation and interpreting services in English, Italian, Spanish, French, Chinese and 90 other languages.
1. Translate keywords and metatags of your web pages for a better search engine visibility of your site. Our translation company can help you with the task:
 Define which and how much content should be localised for SEO. It is a good idea to analyse your content, keywords, and metatags before localising your Internet site A translation service that takes into account the most searched terms, relevant to your business, will increase the likelyhood of your Website being indexed by the principle search engines [Google, Yahoo, MSN in the United States and Europe; or Baidu (China) and Yandex (Russia)]
Translated keywords according to the above criteria should be inserted within the Web page text and the HTML code (together with other metatags such as title and description)
For example, if your firm is selling "gym equipment" within the Italian market, the keywords that should be used for the Italian Website Translation should include: "attrezzature fitness," attrezzi fitness," or more broadly "attrezzi sport" |
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2. Website Language Translation Services. Decide how many languages you want to translate the site into and adapt your CMS:
Arabic, for example, reads from right to left and all elements (including the navigation menu) would have to be reversed
The CMS should support non-UNICODE characters (if not supported by the CMS, Chinese characters take the form of lots of little squares)
3. Make a style guide and highlight the different ways figures (dates, values, numbers ...) are written in different languages. Our translation agency provides this service:
In Italy 10/11/2007 means the 10th of November, but in the US it is the 11th of October!
In Italian figures the point is used to separate thousands (e.g. "twelve thousand” iwould be written 12.000), whilst in the United States the comma is used for that purpose (e.g. 12,000)
And vice versa, taking as an example exchange rates, the decimal separator in Italy is the comma (e.g. 1,56), whereas in the United States it is the point (e.g. 1.56)
4. Choose images on the basis of language, market and culture:
The same image may have different meanings in different countries
It would be a good idea to check if the photos respect the religious and cultural views of your clients
5. Consider your reference market when choosing between British or American English:
The same word could have two different translations (e.g. Lift - in American English | Elevator - in British English)
The same word may have different spelling (e.g. colour - correct spelling in American English | color - correct spelling in British English)
6. Organise the structure of the Website, so that it can manage the peculiarities of the various languages:
The navigation menu should take into account the fact that some languages use more characters than others (e.g. German uses 24% more characters compared to Italian!)
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7. When planning a website language translation, evaluate the linguistic significance of your brand in the markets in which you operate:
Brand names often evoke a meaning that is inconsistent with their products or even counterproductive when removed from their original cultural context (e.g. In Southern Italy the Volkswagen “Jetta” model evokes the idea of bad luck!)
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