Best App or Site To Translate Site To Spanish?

Marc Grisham Founder & CEO InmatePix, Inc.

May 31st, 2016

I need my e-commerce site translated to Spanish. Proper grammar is a must. Most sites I've found translate each word for word instead of entire phrases, so the meaning is not always accurately conveyed. Anyone found a solution to this? TY in advance.

Eric Diaz Co-Owner at Nativa Multicultural Communications and Co-Founder at OYE! Business Intelligence

June 6th, 2016

Mauro is right, human touch is always important for technical details. Here is an article our Hispanic agency wrote on the subject: http://www.thenativa.com/blog/top-4-methods-for-translating-a-website-to-spanish/

Mauro Gutierrez

June 6th, 2016

great article Eric.

Bill Lennan Red Rope Social - everyone is an influencer.

May 31st, 2016

Hi Marc,

what country are you needing it translated for?

Spanish can be a bit different in Mexico, Chile, or Spain.

Marc Grisham Founder & CEO InmatePix, Inc.

June 1st, 2016

Bill, Good question. I'm targeting Hispanics within the U.S. and Mexico. TY.

Joanan Hernandez CEO & Founder at Mollejuo

June 1st, 2016

Hello Marc,

There are ways to translate to Spanish which allows every Spanish speaker to understand. So, nationality and variations among them is not an issue as long as this is considered while doing the translation.

Best of lucks!

Jeremiah Church CEO Cross Connection Control, Inc

June 1st, 2016

Translation is complex. The basic conversion is relatively simply - it's all the edge cases and subtle differences that slip in and greatly compound the work.

Even sentence by sentence might not be enough - translation needs context of use.

what's your tech stack? Most popular commerce platforms are already ready for translation, it's easy to buy a pre-translated package for the non-customized portions of the platform and then you only need to worry about the wording you've changed.

We just finished our first translation effort. We used a service called localeapp.com that exported all of our prepped english language files to their service.

Then I made a request on fiverr for the work based on how many words we had in all of our files - I specifically mentioned that we needed them to do the work in an application instead of via a text file or other common use. A very competent native speaker with a tech background was the only respondent to our request that mentioned the localeapp and asked details about it. She did a great job (later verified by native speakers using our app.) We ended up getting our entire app translated for way less than anywhere else and have established a proven resource for updates as we make changes.

Mauro Gutierrez

June 1st, 2016

good afternoon Mark,

If you actually want a real good quality and proper translation, I'm sorry to let you know that no software can do it properly. You will need a person with the experience and knowledge enough to translate it accurately and with sales focused terms and expressions in Spanish, so the text not only fit in the same area that the ones in English, but as well the sales texts and closing lines will be different than the terms, quotes, and sentences in English.

I can definitely help you out. with this translation or any kind of written content in Spanish. (blog, articles, or even video and you tube channel managing) I'm a professional communicator and native Spanish speaker currently residing in FL US.

Looking forward to hearing back form you!

Mauro.

Christian Tietzsch Senior Operations Professional

June 1st, 2016

Hi Marc - I agree that for a solid translation you're better off with an actual person. I can recommend Twin Translations (specifically, Judy Jenner). They are quite respected in the translation industry, have translated several high-profile apps and they are tech-savvy, too. Their website is www.twintranslations.com. Judy is very active in the industry and has a long background in localization. Hope that helps!
Christian

Rob G

June 1st, 2016

@ Jeremiah C, what advantages did using localeapp.com give you over simply sending a text/word doc to a quality translator/localization expert?

Jeremiah Church CEO Cross Connection Control, Inc

June 1st, 2016

@Rob G

It saved us a lot of time - we didn't need to worry about exporting & then importing a text document - it managed/verifies any variables are in the strings, automatically syncs so as our developers add/remove strings it's automatically pushed up for our translator to work through. A developer pushes changes that have new strings in them localeapp makes them available for the translator - no more having a dev spend time importing/exporting translations as they change (or more likely forgetting and causing language drift.)

The interface for translating, eh, nothing special. the percentage complete/missing keys/searching stuff is helpful but certainly not critical. Really it came down to time saving and one less thing to have to think about.

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