So, you’ve decided to translate your website. Now, what’s the next step? Well, based on our experience we’ve put together a list of super important things for you to consider doing internally, to prepare your website for a smooth translation process.
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Get Organized
A lot of businesses don’t keep their website content organized in separate documents. They might have staff changes, or update their website content directly through emails or on the website itself. We highly recommend keeping your content in a separate, backed-up folder, especially if you’re sharing it with a translation agency or copywriter.
Agencies may have to then manually extract your text, which takes time and costs more. It’s also helpful for you to know how many words you have to translate in advance, to be able to understand the scope of work needed. Available online word count tools are useful, but they’re never totally accurate.
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Update Your Content
Take a look at your content and go through all the important information listed, like your prices and descriptions of your products or services. Make sure to review anything that needs to be updated before you send it to your translation agency.
At Lingo, we get requests to translate entire websites but there’s no need to spend your budget on old articles from over 3 years ago. They won’t help with search results or be relevant today. Instead, we suggest adding some newer news articles or blogs, or update old ones, to include in the project. This practice will ensure your website is fully optimized to share for translation.
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Research SEO Keywords
When you translate text into another language, it’s important to choose the right keywords and research popular topics. Translations often have multiple-word options, so you can select terms that have more interest or searches on Google to improve your visibility for those queries.
Taking the time to do this research will ensure that your translation efforts generate the best results in terms of search engine rankings, using data-driven keywords. Professional translation agencies can help you in creating a shortlist of keywords, to generate traffic and sales to targeted pages.
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Define Your Brand Communication Style
Setting clear and consistent communication guidelines is essential for a successful translation project. It’s important to establish whether a formal or informal writing style will be used, as well as the desired level of simplicity in the content.
A great approach is to request a writing sample from your translation agency to review before starting the entire project. This will help you share a final creative brief, outlining any words to exclude or preferred terms to keep for a great final result.
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Set a Long-term Budget
Launching your website in another language means you’ll need to regularly update its content, matching your primary site activities. It’s important to budget for the whole year, making it ideal to form a long-term partnership with your translation agency to maintain consistency.
At lingo, we offer package options for large volumes of content that can be pre-purchased, which helps reduce costs used over time.
The Summary
Getting the best results for your translation project means taking the time to plan, prepare, and communicate effectively. The early stages are crucial in determining the overall success and quality of the final outcome.
