Website translation and localization services

An overview of the available Web site translation and localization services

  In the global marketplace, it is vital that companies present their corporate messages, products and services in the right language and in the right cultural context. Because of this, Web site translation and localization is undoubtedly a key Internet marketing strategy.

  Which are the available options for a company willing to translate their Website ? Running a search in Google for the term website translastion returns more than 53 million results. You will notice that they can be roughly divided into two main "groups": free/automatic Web site translation services and programs (machine translation), and professional Website translation and localization agencies or freelance translators..

Only experienced translation pros should be considered

  In our brief analysis of the characteristics and implications of Website translation we have already explained why only a team of experienced professionals can guarantee the quality in the final product. More evidence about the pitfalls of automatic translation, machine translation programs, and free online tools for website and Html pages translation can be found in our automatic Web site translation analysis.

Does automatic translation programs work well ?

  Machine translation and automatic free online translation tools could therefore be a cost-effective solution (actually, no-cost) for translating incoming emails, but companies wishing to publish alternative-language versions of their websites should seriously consider looking for professional help, and have the site localized in the target language/s and market/s by a professional Web site translation agency.

  Finally, remember that localizing a website is just the starting point. You should be prepared to have incoming inquiries from potential clients, and set up an effective way to handle them (the goal is to be able to handle as many queries as possible reducing human intervention to a minimum). Here machine translation might be useful to understand the meaning of an e-mail, but a proper set of template replies should be made available to cover the most common situations (this is actually multilingual human-controlled response), in particular if you don't have in-house multilingual staff.

>> Servizi di traduzione e localizzazione in italiano.