In a recent post, we began discussing the subject of e-commerce website translation and its various complexities. With close to 70% of consumers regularly experiencing poorly-translated websites, it’s clear that the problem is both widespread and serious.
So if undertaking a fairly routine Greek, Arabic or Russian website translation, what are the advanced steps that should be taken to guarantee an effective outcome?
E-Commerce Website Translation: Getting the Job Done Right
1 – Consider Locality
First and foremost, it is crucial to avoid thinking about any nation as something of a single, unified consumer community. Locality is of crucial important as cultural differences, spending habits and even use of language can vary enormously from one town, city or region to the next. Be very specific when it comes to exactly who you wish to target and focus your efforts accordingly.
2 – Keyword Strategy
For obvious reasons, the keywords you work with at home are unlikely to have the same kind of impact (if any impact whatsoever) on international audiences. Instead of simply making assumptions therefore, it’s important to invest as much time and effort as necessary in researching and strategically selecting keywords and keyword-phrases in accordance with your chosen target market.
3 – Crawl, Walk, Fly
Extensive testing of any international expansion efforts is extremely important before taking things to higher levels. Rather than attempting to offer everything you do to every market of interest to you, it pays to focus first on smaller target audiences with limited products/services. Doing so will help identify the strengths and weaknesses in your overseas projects, including how and where your website/marketing translations can be optimized for improved performance.
4 – Beware Bots
Last but not least, it’s a point reiterated time and time again for a very good reason – do not put your faith in automated translations. There currently isn’t a bot in existence that can take into account things like culture, context, local interpretation and the kinds of subtle language nuances that can and will determine the translation’s overall outcome.
E-commerce website translation is a complex and intricate process, for which only experience human translation efforts measure up to the mark.
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