Creating multilingual websites has become one of the most effective ways to attract potential customers across the globe. Most businesses and service providers use websites as the first point of contact to trade and connect with consumers around the globe.

It is quite interesting to be able to send and access information seamlessly because of the availability of multiple languages on a website,­­ which facilitates trade between people from diverse linguistic backgrounds.

As a business owner who desires to succeed globally, it is a necessity to have a multilingual website that will help build a longstanding relationship with your customers and develop a high degree of brand loyalty.

The Importance of Multilingualism in International Business

Ultimately, linguistic diversity is a key element in the contemporary business environment, opening up numerous possibilities for various global trade.

Translating and localizing websites can help businesses reach a new audience by communicating in their native language(s). Some key advantages of a multilingual website include:

• Global reach: A multi-language website design can enable businesses to expand their operations and attract customers from different nations.
• Cultural Awareness: There is a close relationship between language and culture. A business can show cultural sensitivity and understanding by using multiple languages and designing web pages to suit the locale.
• Market Dominance: Various languages correspond to various markets. A business can tailor its products, services, and marketing initiatives to local markets with each linguistic group by supporting several languages.
• Enhanced User Support: Regardless of the type of engagement, having your staff or business speak the same language as your clients can increase your market share. Multilingualism in business increases the likelihood that your team will succeed in closing a contract, fixing an error, or keeping clients. When two people share the same language, there is a presumption of confidence that facilitates most conversations and prevents misunderstandings.

Benefits of Multilingual Websites in Global Trade

A multilingual website has the power to change a company completely; it gives a company more visibility and the potential to reach consumers in different regions. What benefits do multilingual websites offer?

• Expanding Your Reach: A multilingual website will enable you to communicate with a wider audience. Your company proposal will become more accessible to previously untapped client segments if you offer numerous language options, boosting your revenue and profitability.
• Improving Conversion Rate: Consumers spend all or most of their time on localized websites. If your website is multilingual, visitors from other countries are more likely to stay longer when they see that the content is available in their language.
• Customer Centrism: Most websites are monolingual, and this poses a challenge to users who are not familiar with the language of choice. Users visiting your website will feel appreciated and grateful if you offer them high-quality information in their native tongue. If this isn’t what your rivals offer, it provides you with an advantage over your competitors.
• Enhancing Brand Image: Having a multilingual website indicates that your company operates internationally, which suggests a level of intricacy, refinement, and complexity. Customers will see all of these positively and identify your company with excellence and professionalism.

Enhancing Global Reach with Multilingual SEO Strategies

Ensuring your website is optimized for its audience is important, especially if it functions well in many languages and locations. Ranking on search engines with a multilingual website is possible through multilingual SEO.

This helps emerging companies to enter new markets, establish connections with customers abroad, and develop a favorable reputation for themselves globally.

Let’s examine some tactics you can use to expand your global reach through effective SEO campaigns:

• Improved Understanding of Your Target Audience: Map your target audience’s languages, localities, and search habits. Assess whether you require multiregional SEO, multilingual SEO, or a combination of the two. This will assist you in selecting the tools and tactics to use to meet your SEO goals.
• Perform International SEO Keyword Research: Make use of keyword research instruments capable of examining foreign language and location-specific keywords. Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, for instance, enables you to conduct keyword research across languages and nations. Remember that different nationalities have different ways of searching the internet.
• Make Special URLs for Various Languages: Give pages created for particular languages special URLs. Some companies take shortcuts by utilizing simple translation plugins that translate specific sections of a page automatically. This results in over-optimization of keywords and inadequate translations. Make distinct pages with specialized language versions instead of optimizing the same page for different languages.
• Employ Hreflang Tags: These tags assist search engines in identifying the language and target region for each page. Hreflang tags are included in the head tag of the HTML page or HTTP headers. Additionally, they can be incorporated straight into XML sitemaps. The target language and location codes make up the Hreflang tag’s parameters.
• Boost the Loading Speed of Your Website: To provide your users with an improved experience, boost the loading speed of your website. Your session time, pages per session, and bounce rate can all be positively impacted by a website that loads quickly, which is also important for SEO. Analyze the performance of your multilingual pages first. Utilize a tool such as PageSpeed Insights to identify performance-related problems and suggest possible solutions.

Importance of Cultural Adaptation for Multilingual Websites

Creating content that appeals to a wide range of consumers is a problem for organizations in the connected global landscape. This procedure, referred to as “cultural adaptation of content,” is largely known as localization and entails modifying narratives, images, and messaging to successfully convey ideas in diverse cultural contexts.

Cultures are connected through language. It’s crucial to understand, nevertheless, that an accurate translation might not necessarily convey the desired meaning. The distinct structures, colloquial idioms, and tones prevalent in several languages can have a significant impact on how text is understood. For example, a funny saying in one language might not make sense in another.

For this reason, while translating business text, care must be taken to preserve its emotional impact and intended meaning.

Challenges in Multilingual Website Development

Highlighted below are some of the most typical problems with multilingual website design that you should be aware of.

• Human or Machine Translation? When creating a multilingual website, the first challenge is deciding on the translation technique to be used. Plugins that automatically translate the website’s content are now available. As soon as the plugin is installed, it works instantly. That would be the quickest and easiest way to obtain material for your website, but it is important to get human translators to proofread to ensure authenticity and usage in the right context before publishing.
• Where to Place the Language Option: It is important to consider where on the website the language option is shown. Some have attempted to automate this by basing the site’s content on the user’s location. However, this is barely satisfactory as the user’s language is not always indicated by their location. Leaving it up to the user to switch to their preferred language is the wisest course of action. The location of the option is now the question. Some people would rather place it above the navigation bar at the top of the website. Others position the page’s language toggle at the bottom.
• Selecting the Languages: Selecting the actual languages needed to create a multilingual website is another issue that frequently arises. It will be much easier to select the languages to design your website with if you are clear about your target market and locale. Prioritize the languages your target audience speaks the most if you have too many languages you would like to target.
• Localizing the Content: Content translation is only one aspect of developing a multilingual website. For instance, even though your website is available in Swahili, Tanzanian visitors might not find it engaging. This is because the material still needs to be locally tailored to the market’s culture and values. This is where hiring a company that provides human translation services will be useful. An expert translator will be able to adapt the information to fit a certain area, setting, or culture. It’s simply one advantage of using a human translator.

Best Practices for Creating Multilingual Websites

Use these pointers and best practices to ensure excellent design and successful multilingual website creation.

• Use a Multi-Language Website Template: Make sure you’re utilizing the same basic multi-language website template for each language on your site to maintain a consistent user experience across languages.
• Verify for Encoding Problems and Font Compatibility: You should also confirm that there are no problems with your font encoding or compatibility. You should have no trouble if the Latin alphabet is used in all of your languages. After you pass that point, though, you should make sure your font works with every language on your website. If necessary, change the formats (date, time, etc.) Modifying the format of different content on your website, such as dates, timings, and so forth, is another crucial aspect of localizing website design.

Key Metrics for Evaluating Multilingual Website Performance

There are several important indicators and techniques that can shed light on your multilingual approach. Among them are:

• Customer Feedback: Since consumer experience and satisfaction level have a significant impact on their purchase decisions, getting direct feedback from them when they interact with your multilingual website is essential. Monitoring customer support indicators, such as customer satisfaction ratings for services rendered in their preferred language by your multilingual website, also aids in assessing the efficacy of the platform.
• Social Media and Website Engagement: Examining social media and website engagement is a good place to start if you want to enhance how your multilingual initiatives are carried out. Having multilingual marketing experts on your team will make it easier for you to monitor the growth of your following, likes, comments left in any of your campaign languages, and shares by followers.
• Monitoring Sales and Revenue: Without monitoring sales and revenue, it is impossible to evaluate the success of your multilingual website or the resonance of your company’s multilingual approach.

Businesses may access and interact with a wide range of global audiences using multilingual websites, which is essential for success in global trade. In today’s global marketplace, organizations can achieve growth and success by adopting best practices in website localization, cultural adaptation, and language diversity.

The post Using Multilingual Websites to Achieve Global Trade Success appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

Contentful is a headless Content Management System (CMS). In other words, this platform focuses on managing the content and not how to present it. If you are building a website, you can use Contentful to manage its content and have developers create the site and access this content through an API. Contentful has great support for localization, such as enabling languages, defining what pieces of content can be translated, and managing content in multiple languages. In this blog, I will explain these different features and will provide some best practices for Contentful Localization.

Enabling Locales

Contentful allows you to group the content in spaces, which can be defined as a collection of content with a certain purpose. If you need your content to be available in multiple languages, the first step is to enable the corresponding locales at the space level.

To enable a locale, you need to follow these steps:

1. Select the space where you want to add the locale
2. Click on Settings > Locales

3. By default, you will see that English (US) locale is enabled. Click on Add Locale button on the right sidebar.

4. The next step will be to select a locale. The list is extensive but, if you require a locale that is not listed, you can use the Content Management API to create a custom one.

Additionally, you can specify a fallback locale (if there is no content in the given locale), it will show the content in the locale selected as a fallback. For example, if you are adding Spanish (Spain) as the locale and you select English (US) as the fallback, then, if there is no content for a given item in Spanish, Contentful will return the English (US) content.

There are additional settings that you can specify but I recommend you keep them with the default values.

5. After reviewing all the fields, click on the Save button.

By following these steps, a new locale will be listed under Settings > Locales grid, and you will be able to translate the content into the target language in the given space.

Enabling Localization on Content Types

As mentioned before, Contentful organizes content into spaces that allow you to group all the related content for a project. Each space has a content model that represents the content types you create.

You can create your own content types, which have a name and a set of fields. For example, you could create a content type called Blog Post, which could have fields like a title (representing the title for the blog post) and body (representing the body of the blog). That way, any new blog post you create should have these two pieces of content (title and body). The definition for this content type would look something like the following screenshot:

If you click on the Settings button on any of these two fields, you will see a popup like the following:

In this popup, you can check the option Enable localization of this field. This option, when checked, will allow you to translate the value on any entry of the given content type containing this field. This setting is not checked by default, so make sure to review all the content types and the fields are enabled for localization as expected, before starting any localization project.

Translating Content

Once you are done enabling locales, defining content types, indicating the fields that allow localization, then you will be able to create multilingual versions of your content. For example, if we follow the example of our Blog Post type, we could have an entry like the following:

If you check the sidebar, you will notice that there is a Translation section. Here you can specify how you want your content to be displayed on the editor:

• Single Locale: by selecting this option, the editor will show only the fields for the selected locale in the dropdown.

• Multiple Locales: by selecting this option, the editor will show the values of each field (if it allows localization) on each target locale.

For example, for our Blog Post type, the title field will display like the following screenshot.

* The same criteria will apply to every field that has localization enabled.

This option is useful when you need to make translations directly in the online editor of Contentful.

The existing functionality allows you to review and populate translations manually. If you want to avoid entering your translations manually, which demands considerable amount of time when translating multiple entries, consider using a Translation Services Connector to automate the process and reduce it to just a few clicks.

Conclusion

Contentful provides great support for localization, allowing you to customize your content types and define what fields can be translated and which ones should not. It does not provide an out-of-the-box option to export content, but by using the Contentful API or installing an app like a connector, you will be able to get this functionality. Contentful is a great option if you are planning to manage multilingual content and use it across different platforms.

References:

• https://www.contentful.com/developers/docs/tutorials/general/setting-locales/
• https://www.contentful.com/developers/docs/concepts/locales/

The post Best Practices for Contentful Localization appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

If your company wants to expand its market in China, your official website should be an important part of the marketing plan because the company website is the key for future customers to learn about your brand.

China accounts for about one-fifth of the global GDP and has a different digital ecosystem than many other countries. Therefore, for companies that would like to enter the Chinese market, it is necessary to create a Simplified Chinese website with localized content targeting the Chinese audience.

Preparing for Website Localization into Simplified Chinese: The earlier, the better.

Many companies do not start thinking about localizing their websites or products until the end of the development phase or until everything is finished. However, based on our localization experience, the later localization is considered, the more issues can happen. To avoid issues and delays, localization should start at the design stage so that the source content creators, such as the technical writers have an idea about how to make the content localizable and localization-friendly. Besides, the quality of source content influences the quality of the target content. So, it’s important to prepare for website localization from inception.

Tips for Designing and Developing Your Website for the Chinese

Designing and developing a website for a Chinese audience requires careful consideration of cultural nuances and technical requirements specific to the Chinese market. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Use a Chinese domain name: In China, websites with a .cn domain name are preferred over other domains. It’s also important to register your domain name with a Chinese domain registrar to ensure your website is accessible in China.
2. Keep it simple: Chinese consumers prefer websites that are clean, simple, and easy to navigate. Avoid cluttered designs and flashy animations.
3. Use a mobile-first approach: Over 98% of China’s internet users access the web from their mobile devices, so it’s important to design your website with mobile users in mind. Make sure your website is responsive and loads quickly on mobile devices.
4. Pay attention to color and imagery: Certain colors and imagery have different meanings in China than they do in Western cultures. For example, red is a lucky color in China, while white is associated with mourning.
5. Optimize for search engines: Baidu is the most popular search engine in China, so make sure your website is optimized for Baidu. This should include using Chinese keywords and optimizing your website’s structure and content for Baidu’s search algorithms.
6. Be mindful of censorship: China has strict censorship laws, and certain topics and keywords may be blocked. Make sure your website doesn’t contain any content that could be seen as sensitive or controversial in China.

Want More traffic? How Digital Marketing Helps Promote Your Brand in China

Digital marketing is a powerful method for promoting your brand in China. Here are some ways digital marketing can help you reach and engage Chinese consumers and gain more traffic.

Social media platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin (also known as TikTok) are extremely popular in China. By creating a presence on these platforms and engaging with Chinese consumers, you can increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. Besides, influencers have a significant impact on Chinese consumers’ purchasing decisions. By partnering with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) or Key Opinion Consumers (KOCs) in your industry, you can leverage their social media presence to promote your brand to their followers.

Baidu is the most popular search engine in China. By optimizing your website for Baidu’s search algorithms and using Baidu’s paid search ads, you can increase your website’s visibility and drive more traffic to your website. Creating high-quality, engaging content in Chinese can also help build your brand’s reputation and drive traffic to your website. This includes blog posts, short videos, vlogs, and infographics that resonate with Chinese consumers.

China also has an enormous e-commerce market. Platforms such as Alibaba’s Tmall and JD.com offer a lot of opportunities for brands to reach consumers. To boost sales and enhance brand visibility, it is essential to establish a presence on these platforms and optimize product listings. Since almost all internet users in China can access the internet through mobile devices, mobile marketing, such as mobile app marketing, SMS marketing, and mobile display ads, is crucial to succeeding in the market.

Conclusion

Localizing your website to Simplified Chinese can provide numerous benefits for your business. It can help you reach a wider audience of potential customers in China and increase your brand’s visibility and credibility in the Chinese market. However, it’s important to approach the localization process carefully and thoughtfully. This includes working with professional translators and native speakers of Simplified Chinese to ensure that the translation is accurate and appropriate for the target audience. It also involves considering cultural differences and ensuring that the website is localized in a way that resonates with the target audience.

References:

• Digital Marketing In China in 2020: Best Ways to Enter the Chinese Market
• Localising your Website for China | by Loc N Apps | Medium

The post Tips for Localizing Your Website into Simplified Chinese appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

Translation Services in South Africa

Language plays an important role in lifestyle and how people perceive things. It has an added advantage when used for business purposes, as it can influence a buyer’s decision. Top brands like Netflix and Coca-Cola, have shown how localization is able to generate positive responses from a new market. As such, any organization that aims to enter the South African market should localize its content to suit the region. This can be done by companies that carry out translation services in South Africa.

Employing the services of South African translation companies to help localize content and products is key. Carrying out South African language translation and interpretation will help your business thrive in the new market. Alternatively, you can employ a South African Translator if you just need help navigating the culture and language. In this article, you’ll find helpful tips for translating your website and social media content for the South African market.

Main Languages to Translate into for South Africa

In a country like South Africa, it is important to understand the language of the regions you want to reach. There are over 35 indigenous South African languages, with only 11 recognized by the constitution.  These 11 languages are spoken by the majority of the South African audience.

Of the eleven (11) official languages in South Africa, highlighted below are the five most spoken languages. Therefore, any company seeking to provide services to South Africa should focus on these five (5) languages.

·         Zulu

Also known as isiZulu, is a southern Bantu language that belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. It is the second most widely spoken Bantu language, after Swahili. isiZulu is spoken by 12 million native speakers per the 2011 census, and there are about 16 million L2 (second language) speakers. It is spoken by approximately 46% of the South African population and is also the most spoken first language (23% of the population), solidifying its position as the most spoken language in South Africa.

·         Xhosa

Commonly called isiXhosa, is a Nguni language under the Niger-Congo family. Xhosa has spoken by about 2 million first speakers and 11 million second speakers; the bulk of Xhosa speakers are mainly in Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Gauteng, and Northern Cape.

Approximately 16% of South Africans speak Xhosa as their first language, and it has gained popularity over time.

·         Afrikaans

It is often described as Dutch Creole due to the amount of influence Dutch has on the language. Some people call it the language of the oppressor; a West-Germanic language belonging to the Indo-European family.

Afrikaans is the language spoken by the widest variety of South Africans. 75.8% of Colored South Africans (4.8 million); 60.8% of White South Africans (2.7 million), 1.5% of Black South Africans (600,000), and 4.6% of Indian South Africans (58,000 people), speak it as their first language.

The Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces in the western portion of South Africa speak it as their primary language.

There are 10.3 million L2 speakers in South Africa, and Afrikaans is spoken by 13.5% of the country’s overall population.

·         Sotho

The ethnic group that speaks this language is also known as Sotho. They are of three (3) groups, Southern Sotho (Basotho), Northern Sotho (Pedi), and the Tswana.

The southern group, Basotho, is a Southern Bantu language, spoken by 5.6 million first speakers, and 7.9 million second speakers. The majority of speakers live in the North Central parts of the country.

·         Pedi       

Also known as Northern Sotho or even Sepedi, it is the first language of over 6 million (9.1%) people and 9.1 million L2 speakers. This makes it the 5th most spoken language in South Africa. The Sepedi language is spoken most in Mpumalanga, Gauteng, and the Limpopo provinces.

Statistics on Consumers in the South African Market

With a population of 60 million, South Africa has utilized its resources and people to maximum efficiency. The country ranks 3rd on the African top GDP by country list, and it is an achievement worthy of note.

Records show that consumers in South Africa use social media to keep up with friends and family (66%). The second population uses it for reading news stories (49%). With these stats, it is obvious that advertising on social media will reach a large audience, and a higher conversion rate is certain when the content is in their native language. Companies that provide translation services in South Africa can provide you with the answers you need on getting started.

Features For Websites South African Consumers Use

Besides catchy templates and fonts, the unique colors can set the tone of your website for South Africans. Another feature to consider is the language the website is being translated into. After deciding on the target language, you can contact localization companies that offer translation services in South Africa.

As observed from the top websites visited by South Africans so far in 2022. The most visited websites are all those that offer services in the local dialect like Sowetan Live, or the South African.  Both sites have gotten more than 25 million page views between them.

This further proves that there is a need for website translation services in South Africa for every organization aiming to bring products to the country.

Most Popular Social Channels Used by South African Consumers

There are about 41.18 million active internet users in South Africa. This represents 64% of internet penetration in the country, but there are only about 28 million active social media users.

• Over a third of South Africa’s population, or 24.1 million individuals, are currently active on Facebook. From this stat 24.1 million people, 50.4% are female and 49.6% are male.
• About 5.1 million South Africans use Instagram. Males make up 46.9%, while females make up 53.1%.
• According to statcounter.com, 12.64% of South Africans (approximately 8 million South Africans) have a Twitter account.

Conclusion

Culture and ethnicity have an impact on businesses in Africa, and as such should be taken into consideration during localization.

Also, when localizing to a particular region, it is worth noting that the process is a critical one.  This is because the localization process can make or mar the success of a brand in a new market. Therefore, you should consider getting the best translation services in South Africa.

The post Translating Your Website and Social Media Content for South African Market appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

When you are planning to launch your website in Chinese, there are several key factors to consider in your website localization strategy. These include tasks that you will need to take, the capability of your CMS (content management system), the tools that your localization partner can provide, etc. In this blog, we will explore these in detail, so you can better prepare for your Simplified Chinese website translation project, and we can also look at how GPI can help you build your budget with our own developed tools.

Basic Tasks to Include in the Chinese Website Translation Project

To start a successful Chinese website translation project, the first thing to do is to define the translation workflow. As a best practice, we recommend these 15 steps to follow:

1. Review & Analysis of Source Files (also known as localization packet)
2. Multilingual Website Workflow Based on CMS
3. Project Kick-Off
4. Subject Matter Training and Research
5. Cultural Correctness Assessment
6. Glossary & Style Guide Development
7. SEO/Keyword Research & Localization
8. Translation, Editing, and Proofreading
9. Localization of all Graphics
10. Localization of Documents
11. Localization of Multimedia
12. Basic Online QA & Testing
13. Launch Language Versions
14. Final Delivery
15. Final Edits and Archiving of Files

Getting Started with your Chinese Website Translation

Now that you have defined the steps to undertake for your Chinese website translation project, the next thing to do is to get prepared. There are many factors to consider in this step, one of the most important factors to consider is for your translation and technology partner to understand your CMS and its capabilities Ideally,  your translation partner can provide a connector which will interface with your CMS so that content can easily be imported and exported. This will establish an automated workflow, which allows efficient collaboration between your engineering team and translation partner. Taking this step into consideration will help save a considerable amount of time, human effort, and cost.

Understanding Source Files and other Requirements

For your Chinese website translation projects, it is important to evaluate the content. Your translation partner will work closely with your website development team to understand the format of the files, discuss the best way to export the files to prepare for translation, and how to import it back to the CMS once the translation is complete.

A qualified translation agency will use Translation Memory (TM), a CMS used to store the content in both source and target languages. When the professional translation team starts the translation, they can utilize the existing translations saved in the TM. There are 2 key benefits of using translation memory: consistency and cost savings. Since previous translations are stored in the TM, should that content in part or whole, be submitted for translation again, the TM will recognize the content and automatically adapt the previous translation to the new content. This ensures quality and consistency by adopting already translated content whether it originally appeared on your website or was submitted as a document translation. By utilizing the repeated/matched segments, you will also be able to save money as this content will be charged at a reduced price.

Last but not least, after the translation is completed and imported back into your CMS, an online quality assurance (online QA) step is essential to ensure that the translated content is displayed correctly on the website. Considering the differences between Chinese characters and English letters, several potential errors may be introduced during the importing of the content and may not be noticed if handled by non-native Chinese speakers, such as wrong line breaks, corrupted characters, incomplete content due to space, etc.

SEO and Keywords Research

It is up to the client’s decision on whether they wish to include SEO steps in their Chinese website translation project. However, it is recommended to include it in the initial stages, so that the content translated will be optimized for marketing purposes in the target market. As many of you may know, Google is not as popular and less accessible in the Chinese market, therefore, when setting up an SEO strategy, you will need to make sure to target the right search engine, in this case is Baidu, and other digital platforms such as Weibo, Weixin, etc.

You are welcome to visit my other blog for more insights about the Chinese social media platforms.

Make Use of the GPI Proprietary Tools

GPI has a team of dedicated developers who are specialized and have extensive experience in building CMS-based website translation connectors for a wide range of CMS tools. The connectors can help simplify content export/import by establishing an automatic workflow. These workflows will make you and your web development team’s life easy by minimizing the manual effort needed to copy and paste the content into an external document, and as a result, minimizing the potential errors introduced during the manual process.

Conclusion

In summary, I hope this blog helps to provide some insights for the preparation of your Chinese website translation plans. GPI has a team of professional website developers, linguists, and project managers with experience in translation services. The team has successfully delivered hundreds of Chinese website translation projects to the most prestigious clients worldwide, helping them create the most appealing content for the Chinese market.

The post How to Budget for Chinese Website Translation Projects appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) or simply the Emirates, had 1,144 fully operational hotels by the end of 2021. Despite lagging business for the global hotel and tourism industry in 2020 and 2021, this country managed to grow its hotel industry by 5% in 2022. UAE’s tourism economy is predicted to rise to AED 264.5 billion (USD 72 billion) which will be 12.4 % of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in 2027. This development is not by accident, as the seven Emirates that make up the Emirates Tourism Council have clear visions of where UAE tourism should be heading.

Technology and communication infrastructures are critical foundations in paving the road to successful tourism in the UAE. Statistics show that 99% of the UAE population are internet users and the majority can communicate in English (the lingua franca), Arabic, Hindi, Tagalog, Russian, and French among many other languages. Whether you are a business owner, general manager, marketer, or someone working for any of the tourism agencies, you will benefit from understanding the process of a successful hotel and tourism website translation in the UAE. 

The Need for High-Quality Website Translation Services

Have you ever felt frustrated because your computer or mobile browser’s auto-translation doesn’t allow you to fill in a simple booking form? Either the page will default to Arabic (due to your location) or the machine translation (MT) doesn’t make sense at all. Digital roadblocks like these are inexcusable if you are aiming to position your hotel and/or brand in an international hub such as the UAE. When it comes to website translation, never settle for less, ever.

Many high-end luxury hotels have suffered the consequences of a poorly-translated brand name. For example, a popular hotel brand in the UAE was mistakenly translated into the term “pigtail” in Simplified Chinese. Lucky for this brand, the marketing person had an eye for detail and was able to address the issue before the website was published. Any native and highly-experienced translators in the tourism industry won’t commit such a mistake. Moreover, working with a reputable Language Service Provider (LSP) will provide you with a dedicated Localization Project Manager (PM) who will look after your website translation project every step of the way. A “cheaper” option, on the other hand, may easily drop the ball on the translation quality, disappear without a trace, and zero accountability. 

Website Translation in the UAE: Top languages to consider

So, you launched your business with an English website first. After 6 months you’ve been seeing good traction and enjoying the organic search engine visibility. “Do I still need to translate my website?” You might be asking this question as you’re “on the fence” about whether the extra investment in your website’s language offerings will be a good move or not. 

Well, I cannot answer this question for you. However, let me show you some numbers* and facts to help you make an informed decision:

• The highest number of tourists in the UAE was recorded in 2019 with 38.4 million
• Dubai alone had 7.28 million international tourists in 2021
• The top 5 sources of tourism were: India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, and USA
• 26% of these tourists came from MENA and GCC (Arabic-speaking regions)
• 22% from Western-Europe
• 18% from South Asia
• 15% from Eastern Europe
• The top cities where tourists came from: Bangkok, Paris, London, and Singapore

*Source: https://www.globalmediainsight.com

With this data in mind, it’s almost obvious that a business website should at least start in English and Arabic. However, key hotel brands in the UAE have these languages on their websites:

• Arabic
• English
• Chinese
• German
• Russian
• Spanish
• French

Overview of the Website Translation Cost

When venturing into a website translation project for your UAE-based hotel and/or tourism agency, understanding the factors behind the cost will save you from making a rookie mistake – of treating the website translation project as a “one-time purchase”. Your website is most likely dynamic and will need to be regularly updated in all the languages you choose. Many business owners fell into the pit of working directly with freelance translators or even worst, resorting to machine translation (MT) just to save cost.

A website that you expect to be a source or driver of income requires a systematic approach, tools, and quality management across all languages. This process cannot be cut short.

Website Translation Fundamentals

1. Source Website Analysis
2. Multilingual CMS (Content Management System)
3. Defining Translation scope and process for updates
4. Subject Matter Training and Research
5. Cultural Correctness Assessment
6. Glossary & Style Guide Development
7. SEO/Keyword Research & Localization
8. Translation, Editing, and Proofreading (Transcreation-Copywriting)
9. Localization of all Graphics
10. Localization of Documents
11. Localization of Multimedia
12. Basic Online QA & Testing
13. Launch Language Versions

Therefore, next time someone tells you that a website translation is as easy as one, two, and three… you will know better. All website translation projects should follow a documented process to ensure adherence to industry standard web localization best practices. And it takes a team (the right team) to do it properly.

Download this free ebook: Steps to Website Translation Success for further information.

Conclusion

Successful website translation projects for hotel and tourism businesses in the UAE require high-quality language adaptation by native-speaking linguists. As international tourists will have plenty of hotels to choose from in the UAE, a well-translated website will set your brand apart from your competitors. When your guests view your website, the language and images should transport to your hotel or resort. The translation of your website content is similar to its original creation, it requires wordsmithing by a native speaker of the target language who specializes in hospitality and marketing translations – the last thing you want is a generic or technical translation, this type of translation will not draw in your customers. Accuracy, sensitivity, and cultural relevance are key aspects to consider, which is why you want to be sure to work with a language service provider that considers all the aspects of your content including suitability to a target region and its culture, the technical aspects of supporting multilingual websites, and the process for translation and updates.

Globalization Partners International has 20 years of language service experience working with key hotel and tourism brands such as the One&Only, Atlantis The Palm, Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts, and InterContinental, to name a few.

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Knowledge Base is a self-serve customer service library that contains the answers to key questions about a product or service. When customers have a question or an issue, typically they get routed to this platform. A good knowledge base (i.e., with relevant topics and answers) helps to improve customer experience and enables your support team to work better. Because customers can get answers to frequent questions/issues without having to contact the support team, support can concentrate on more complex topics.

If your company provides global products or services or planning to expand globally, then it’s important to provide a multilingual knowledge base so customers located in different parts of the world can access the content in their preferred language.

As part of this blog, we will provide some tips about the HubSpot Knowledge Base localization, but if you are interested in basic concepts, like creating a knowledge base, or checking out examples, you can access this page.

Enable Languages

Following a similar concept as for website and blog localization in HubSpot, the first step you need to do is to add the language(s) you want your Knowledge Base to be translated to. To do this, follow these steps:

– Click the Settings icon on the top-right menu:

– Once you are on the settings page, go to the left sidebar and scroll down to the bottom and then click Tools > Website > Knowledge Base:

– In the Language section, make sure you have the correct Primary Language selected. This will be the source language, i.e., the language in which your content will be created and then will be used as the source to be translated into other languages. Also, as mentioned in the platform, this will be the default language, which means that users whose language is not supported will be redirected to this primary language. Typically, this language will be English.

– In the Other Languages subsection, you can click the Add language button.

– By clicking the Add language button, a popup will be displayed with a select field including several languages. If you want to check what languages are supported by HubSpot Knowledge Base, you can check this article.

– Select the language you want to add and click on the Add button.

– Finally, click Save on the Settings page to confirm your changes.

Localize your Knowledge Base Template

After enabling languages, the next recommended step is to customize your Knowledge Base template so it supports multiple languages. To do this, you have to follow these steps:

– On the top menu, click Service > Knowledge Base.

– Click on Customize Template.

– In the left panel, locate the MULTI-LANGUAGE section and then click on the Edit button:

– By clicking the Edit button, a popup will be displayed with some options to localize your template. Here you will find several fields and you will be able to specify the translation for each target language. Additionally, you can filter what languages you want to populate by clicking on the filtering option at the top.

– Once you are done making changes to your template, click the Publish translation button.

– Finally, on the top right, click the Update template button.

Localize Categories

Just as you did for templates, you will need to localize the categories of your Knowledge Base. The process of translating categories is pretty straightforward:

– On the top menu, click Service > Knowledge Base.

– Click the Organize categories button.

– Similar to templates, you can filter what languages you want to work on by clicking the language filter.

– The categories that need translation will show a Needs translation label. For such categories, click the Edit button.

– After clicking on the Edit button, you will see both the category name and description. For each one of these, you will see one box per language, which will allow you to enter the translations.

Localize Knowledge Base Articles

Now that the languages are enabled and your Knowledge Base templates and categories are localized, the next step would be to localize your articles. This follows a similar concept as website pages and blog posts, where you have the option to create multi-language variations.

To localize a knowledge base article, you have to follow these steps:

– On the top menu, click Service > Knowledge Base.

– Go to the Articles tab.

– Search for the article you want to localize, and then click More > Create multi-language variation.

– By clicking on this button, a popup will be displayed with the option to select the language for the new variation. Select a language and then click the Save button.

– By clicking the Save button, you will be redirected to the Editor where you will be able to populate the translation. We strongly recommend using human translation to get a better quality translation and, consequently, provide an even better customer experience.

– Once you are done making the edits, click Publish to get the translation published live.

These localization capabilities are relatively new to HubSpot, so you might already have a translated version of your Knowledge Base. In the past, there used to be a separate Knowledge Base for each language. To start using the new language variations concept, you can connect your translation to the corresponding source (typically English) version. This can be done in the Editor, by clicking the Language Switcher and then clicking the Connect to primary article option. This will show a popup in which you will be able to select a language and the primary article.

Conclusion

Building a Knowledge Base is important to improve your customer service and support. Furthermore, if you provide a product or service globally, it’s important to make this Knowledge Base available in multiple languages. A great tool to accomplish this easily and quickly is HubSpot Knowledge Base software. This software started originally with support for a single language, but actually, it provides a really nice and easy-to-use multilingual support.

References:
HubSpot/knowledge-base
Create knowledge base articles in multiple languages

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Nowadays, the power of content is growing rapidly, becoming a key aspect of a successful business. More and more brands understand the purpose of a good, engaging website with interactive content; to help create trustworthy relationships and bond with your potential consumer.

Because the majority of Russians do not communicate well in English, if you plan to market to a Russian audience you should consider translating your website into Russian for the most impact.

5 Things to Consider for Website Translation into Russian

1. Content Management System
   

You have to know your CMS as well as its capability integration. Your web team will be aware of all the necessary steps and can participate in choosing the right translation agency. A vital aspect to keep in mind is that the selected agency has to adapt to the company’s workflow and ensure a smooth and easy process of collaboration, establishing credibility. Get the right team on board!

2. Machine vs. Human Translation
   

Eventually, it comes to choosing your website translation quality options, you might be thinking – human or machine translation? I believe in human touch and attention to detail, however, there are certain industries and areas where machine translation can be utilized or even combined with human proofreading and editing as a polisher. Life Sciences, automotive, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing are primary users of combined MT technology and human translation. Making the right decision here can affect communication tremendously.

Native subject matter translators and language reviewers play one of the most important roles in working with your content as they can assure the right fluidity of the words and catch your company’s tone of voice. Your potential translation agency should have a team of qualified native target language professionals that specialize in your market.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
   

Creating a multilingual online presence is not as easy as it seems. From website translations to localization of your social media and advertising, there is a lot on your plate. And when it gets to the point of multilingual website SEO, things get a little more complex.

When building a multilingual web page, there are a few crucial SEO factors to consider. Most importantly, you need to ensure that potential Russian consumers find the correct pages for their language and location. Nowadays, people search using Google most of the time, however, Yandex is more popular in Russia. The goal is to use the right SEO strategy and try to forecast what your target audience is looking for in their language and, to predict what Russian keywords they will be typing to find their desired product or service type.

4. Translation Memory Tool

Speaking about another important point, your localization project managers have to share with you the benefits of Translation Memory Tool and how it can be integrated within your projects. It works like a bank with your previously translated content, which will be stored by the tool. This enables the linguistic team to save time completing translations; it also can help save you money when performing updates or repetitive words or sentences. Additionally, it helps maintain communication consistency – so significant for successful businesses these days. Ensure that your localized Translation Memory is updated, saved, and well maintained for future use.

5. Testing & Quality

And last but not least, one of the steps that a lot of companies disregard when translating their website is testing it before going live. That means checking the online version, making sure everything is running correctly, and the translation is accurate. Don’t feel it’s a burden to ask your translation agency to verify the online version of the translated website. It should be a part of the quality assurance protocol, the translation team can identify functionality errors as well as confirm content has posted accurately. This will give your translators more context to the words and sentences, improving the translation quality even more.

Conclusion

As you might have figured out at this point, website translation into Russian can be a long journey, like any other language. But I believe that with an experienced translation agency and the right approach, you will be able to overcome most of these challenges and present your business in the best possible light for your Russian audience. Sometimes we think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put into a project, instead is the quality of time we put in. Remember that!

References:

power-of-content-marketing
Human_vs_Machine_Translation

The post Website Translation into Russian: 5 Things to Consider appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

India is a country of 1.38 billion people, the second most populated country in the world, and the seventh-largest country by area. With 29 different states, 7 union territories, and 22 official languages, India prides itself on being one of the most populous democracies in the world and standing united regardless of their cultural differences, ethnicity, and religious beliefs.

Back in 1961, the Indian Census recognized about 1,652 different languages which also included the languages not native to the subcontinent. However, the constitution confirmed only 22 languages to be the official languages of India. Now, only these 22 languages are known to Indian citizens, however, knowing at least 2 or 3 of these languages is very common. While India is the second most English-speaking country in the world, English is not included in the 22 official languages.

India has “official languages” at the state and central levels but there is no “national language”. To make it easier for the people and because Hindi is widely spoken across many states, the Constitution of India decided to make Hindi the official language of India. It is still not the national language of India, because the Indian law states that they will not consider it as a national language until the constituency of each state of India accepts it.

Interesting facts about the Hindi language

The Hindi language (हिंदी), is written in Devanagari script and influenced by one of the oldest and most studied languages in history, Sanskrit. The word Hindi means “land of the Indus River” which was originated from a Persian word known as “Hind”.

1. Many words in English have been derived from the Hindi language.
For example: jungle, yoga, bungalow, pajamas, and cheetah

2. Hindi is the fourth most spoken language in the world after English, Spanish and Chinese.

3. Other than India, 20 countries speak Hindi including South Africa, Yemen, Singapore, Nepal, New Zealand, and the USA.

Importance of Hindi language translation

Within the last couple of years, the world has gone from in-person meetings to online meetings, mega contracts are signed digitally, multinational companies have opted for remote working, while AI and metaverse are now being given further significance. With this change, companies take digitalization very seriously to help them attract new customers and clients to their brands. Websites are one of the most important tools to drive traffic to their brands, while other tools like social media posts, advertisements, and marketing collaterals also play a very important role to help companies attract more customers.

While these tools can be marketed in English – what makes successful companies differ from the others is their holistic approach toward customer satisfaction, where their products or services are provided using their customers’ native languages. According to a recent survey, 76% of the buyers prefer to buy their products from a website that offers products in their language and about 60% of the buyers do not buy from an English-only website.

Translation Process

While there are many processes, tools, and steps involved in a successful website translation project, we always recommend following the best practices listed in the 15 steps below:

1. Review & Analysis of Source Website Assets
2. Best Practice Multilingual Workflow Based on CMS
3. Project Kick-Off
4. Subject Matter Training and Research
5. Cultural Correctness Assessment
6. Glossary & Style Guide Development
7. SEO/Keyword Research & Localization
8. Translation, Editing, and Proofreading (Transcreation-Copywriting)
9. Localization of all Graphics
10. Localization of Documents
11. Localization of Multimedia
12. Basic Online QA & Testing
13. Launch Language Versions
14. Final Delivery
15. Final Edits and Archiving of Files

It is always recommended for a company to choose the localization process over translations for their multilingual websites. Localization (L10N) involves translating and localizing the front end of your website into different languages ensuring all content (text and graphics) is translated in an accurate and culturally correct manner.

Benefits of Website Translations in Hindi

Out of 1.8 billion people in India, 52.8 crore people (1 crore = ten million), or 43.6% of the population speak the Hindi language. Translating your website and any other content into the Hindi language can help you reach a wider audience.

• You can have an added advantage over your competitors by improving your SEO ranking on both English and Hindi websites.
• Did you know leading companies like Apple have their websites translated into 130 languages? Communication with your customers/clients is not only about sharing your content but also about understanding them and connecting with them emotionally. 80% of purchases are done emotionally, while only 20% are logical. Hence, brands need to connect emotionally with their clients by communicating with them in their native languages.

Conclusion

With the massive population in India, every day is an opportunity for any multinational companies to enter this market. Indeed, with its different states and dialects, belief systems, and cultural differences it will not be easy for any brands to take over the entire market at once. However, the first step a company should take is to connect with the target audience (or states) by providing products or services in their native languages. Because Hindi is widely spoken across the Indian nations, it is recommended to start with this language, then slowly emerge into other markets and languages for a successful and profitable business.

At Globalization Partners International, we have language professionals who are knowledgeable not only the Hindi language translation, but also its culture. For additional information on entering the Indian market, please see our report: Website Globalization and E-Business: India or contact us.

References:

Languages of India
Purchasing decisions are emotional
About Hindi
About India
Hindi-speaking across states

The post Translation Services and the Hindi Language appeared first on Globalization Partners International.

According to statistics, there were 76 million internet users in the Philippines as of January 2022. That’s 68% of its entire population. For 6 years now, this country holds the title: “the social media capital of the world” because internet users in the Philippines are always online for about 4 hours per day! No wonder the world’s tech billionaire Elon Musk has set his eye on entering the Philippines internet market. Is your business seeing this excellent opportunity as well? Do you think tapping into the Tagalog-speaking market is a good idea? We could not agree more. But first, let me tell you some tips about website translation into Tagalog.

Why Translate Your Website into Tagalog?

Truth be told, 95% of Filipinos speak English. The Philippines is the third largest English-speaking country in the world. So why even bother to translate your website into Tagalog? The bold answer is eventually your competitors will. So will you lead or follow?

Filipinos are patriotic, their golden rule says: “While people preserve its language; it preserves the marks of liberty.” For them, Tagalog is more than just a language, it means freedom. So whenever they have the opportunity to speak, read, and transact in their language, it is a conscious decision. 

For example, if there are two equivalent products to choose from, but your website has the option to convey the message in Tagalog, then Filipinos will likely engage more in your business. This means that you exerted an effort to try and talk to their hearts – not just their English-educated mind. Keep in mind that having a bad or out-of-context Tagalog website could insult those you are trying to reach. So if you decide to translate your website into Tagalog it requires commitment: either translate it properly or do not do it all.

5 Things to Consider for Website Translation into Tagalog

1. Multilingual CMS and workflow

Before jumping into anything, ensure that your website content management system (CMS) supports multiple language interfaces. This will help you maintain consistency across all your content within one platform. No matter how easy it may seem in the beginning, do not be tempted to build your Tagalog website in a separate CMS. WordPress, Sitecore, and Contentful are some examples of popular multilingual CMS available in the market. If you are still unsure where to look and how to ascertain this, your Language Service Provider (LSP) should be able to point you in the right direction.

Another crucial thing to consider is the translation workflow. Gone are the days when content ready for translation is manually extracted from the website using documents & tables. As content grows, file coordination should not be a burden in the long run. Consider using a bespoke translation connector to have a seamless interface between your website and your translation provider. Make no mistake, this connector is not an AI or machine translation plugin.

 2. Tagalog keywords research/SEO localization 

The idea of investing in another language (or market) for your website is to expand your reach, visibility, and profitability. Therefore, if your English website is not producing the result that you expect, then consider optimizing it first before embarking on translation.

SEO localization & copywriting for Tagalog websites can focus on the main search engine, Google. Although Bing, Yahoo!, and Ecosia share a minor portion of 6% combined, Google search dominates at 94%. There are SEO tools available in the market such as Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner – a good SEO agency will not narrow its keywords research using just one tool. And because Filipinos are projected to spend $12 billion online by 2025, investing in SEO localization for your Tagalog website is a must.

3. Tricky Tagalog words

How would you know if your Tagalog language service provider works with native speakers and not a machine translator? A page or two of sample translations can help to evaluate their quality, however, Tagalog consistency is very tricky. There are 8 major provinces in the Philippines where Tagalog is spoken. For example, the Tagalog word for “ant” in Batangas dialect is “guyam” however “langgam” is widely used and accepted. Native translators would know that “langgam” is in fact, just a type of “guyam” or small ants. However, machine translation would not even have a term for “guyam”. 

There are also a lot of homonyms in the Tagalog dictionary that can only be translated properly through context. For example, “I love you” in Tagalog is “mahal kita,” while “this is expensive” is “ito ay mahal”.

Indeed, the words love and expensive are both “mahal” in Tagalog. Don’t laugh, love can be really expensive so pay attention to the Tagalog context.

4. Cultural consideration

As you have already learned, the Tagalog language is beyond just spoken and written words. The people who speak Tagalog have high respect for their elders so translating “you are my father” should be “kayo ang aking ama” instead of “ikaw ang aking ama” – elders should be addressed politely with the plural “you”.

How about the use of gender? Translating pronouns such as “he” and “she” are both “siya” in Tagalog. It may sound easier, however, “he or she” in a sentence shouldn’t be translated word-for-word as “siya o siya” but rather, the subjects’ names should be used instead of pronouns.

5. Filipino vs. Tagalog

While Tagalog is the oldest language in the Philippines (way before the Spanish colonization), there are other dominant dialects spoken within the country. To narrow down the official languages into two, English and all languages combined in the Philippines including Tagalog, the Filipino term was made official in 1987. However, this does not mean Tagalog in itself. This is a neutral (or rather political) approach to collectively represent the Philippines’ languages and dialects in one term. Of course, your native Tagalog translators would know this.

For example, the Cebuano dialect also falls under Filipino yet is so different that Tagalog speakers do not understand it. However, because Tagalog and English are officially used in the education system, Filipinos can still communicate and understand each other despite having many dialects. 

Conclusion

Just imagine what will happen when the social media capital of the world, the Philippines, decides to favor Tagalog websites over English? Filipinos are practically residents of the internet (spending 4 hours of their time daily) and are projected to spend $12 billion online by 2025. If your business is still contemplating the why’s of website translation into Tagalog rather than when, then be prepared to bear the risk of opportunity lost. 

Should you choose to embark on this feat, remember these 5 things: Multilingual CMS and workflow, Tagalog keywords research/SEO localization, tricky Tagalog words, cultural consideration, and Filipino vs. Tagalog.

Globalization Partners International has teams of professional linguists, multilingual SEO experts, and creative desktop publishers ready to work with you as you expand your business.

References:

• Digital-2022-Philippines
• Social Network Users in Philippines
• Jose Rizal Quotes-Tagalog-language
• Tagalog sentences
• Shopify Philippines-trending-products 

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