How do you go about translating your website or app?

Lane Musgrave Digital Architect // Multimedia Producer // Entrepreneur

July 24th, 2014

I need an e-commerce site translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Arabic. I can do the design and development for the international sites. It would just be a spreadsheet of tags needing translation from a native speaker.

Would you use an online agency, find freelancers online or use an automated translator with proofreading? Any other ways to go about this?

Brian McConnell

July 24th, 2014

Lane, I am the head of localization at Insight.ly I'd be happy to discuss this with you. In general, you need to do two things. First, you need to get systems in place to manage the translations (content) and localization (user interface translation). Just like you use a content management system to manage content, you'll need a translation management system to manage translations. You do _NOT_ want to be juggling spreadsheets to do this. Second, you'll need to find a translation agency that is comfortable with the tools you decide to use. You want to pick the agency after you settle

hardwarelover

July 24th, 2014

Verbalize.it has a network of vetted translators for business purposes. I have used the on-demand translation for Portuguese but not the business services -- might be worth checking out: http://www.verbalizeit.com/

Kate Hiscox

July 24th, 2014

We are working with localize.js and Brandon is excellent. I highly recommend them. Again, machine and human translation available on Localize. We just hired a Localization Manager too as it becomes quite the handful with web content, email, support and voice.

Jake Carlson Software Development Manager at Oracle

July 24th, 2014

I wouldn't use Localize.js if SEO in languages other than the original are important to you.

Kate Hiscox

July 24th, 2014

Why?

Kate Hiscox

July 24th, 2014

And SEO for localization depends a lot on your domain structure. We don't know if Lane is going for local domains etc. My 2 cents.

Jasmine Alexander

July 24th, 2014

http://www.smartling.com/

Hi Lane, You can check out this website. It translates on the fly.

Anonymous

July 28th, 2014

Site translation is the easy part....setting up language customer support is what most forget about (if you market product in Chinese, then there is an expectation that Chinese language support is available for questions, etc.).

Also, worth considering how to improve international conversion, which goes far beyond translation, just worked with a 30mil. merchant to increase international sales, 7 months in by 40k last month, steady growth projection.

Kate Hiscox

July 28th, 2014

Per Jonathon, make sure your Support site will support your transaltion app. Email is a no go, that will be manual but if you are using something like Localize.js as we are, if your support solution will accept custom Javascript, your support content is sucked in and translated the same as your website. FYI both HelpJuice and ZenDesk support this, Desk.com don't without a paid upgrade at this time.

Adrian Farkash Software Engineering Professional

July 28th, 2014

I'd recommend Bridge360 (www.bridge360.com), especially if you need software internationalization; and I expect you might need. For example Arabic is written right to left. If you are inexperienced with internationalization but still want to go solo there are good books (Amazon, your library) that you may want to consult.

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