Hosting a Multilingual Website: Internationalize, Localize and Globalize

For many businesses, the Internet is the focal point where all the action takes place. Whether you're looking for information or trying to source goods and services, reaching out to the Internet is almost like a natural reflex today. Online businesses have understood the advantages of having a multi-lingual site over just the English language site: it simply brings the whole world to their portal…virtually! Internet usage is charting an explosive growth trajectory, especially in Asia and Europe. The diversity in languages across Internet savvy populations is reason enough for online businesses to host multilingual websites and capitalize on the benefits.

Internationalize your products

According to recent estimates, the number of Internet users in the Europe is about 338 million. Europe, which is home to languages like French, German, Spanish and Italian, is a model of linguistic diversity at its best. Likewise, there are millions of Net-savvy users in Japan, China, Korea and India, another milieu of language diversity. To succeed in this globalized environment, companies have to project a consistent image of themselves to potential customers who may be located at any corner of the globe. To host a well designed website with easy navigability and meaningful content in some if not all the major languages would be a good strategy to boost your sales and profitability.

Localize your products and services

Although the Internet has been extensively used by the English speaking world in the past, there is a distinct shift in its usage towards other languages, notably Chinese, German, French, Spanish and Italian. The developing world is coming up to speed in hosting websites in the vernacular languages. With cultural differences existing between different regions, websites have to sound and appear consistent, but at the same time package their content and message in a way that appeals to people of diverse cultural backgrounds; and this is where localization plays a part. A good translation service provider must also take care of the localization aspect, which is the adaptation of content to suit the local taste, without compromising on accuracy.

A good translation and localization agency is expected to offer expert services encompassing the following aspects of website content creation/development:
Content localization
Page titles and descriptions
Search engine keywords
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising content
Pages in HTML, ASP, PHP, XML, etc.

Globalize – the world is your oyster

Once you're ready with your content in multiple languages, you're set to go global. You can publish your e-commerce or social networking site, blogs, forums and all for the world to see and buy, subscribe or participate. Social networking is all the rage today in cyberspace. Facebook, one of the more popular sites, is likely to launch its services in non-English languages. A third of MySpace and Facebook users are reportedly based outside North America.

Ratings from comScore say that less than a quarter of YouTube's 76 million unique visitors in July, were from the U.S. And the Skyrock Network France's leading social networking site, recorded 9.4 million unique visits in August, four times more than MySpace in France.

The importance of the 'comfort' factor in communication has been illustrated by survey findings by renowned agencies like IDC, Forrester Research and others.
Web users are four times more likely to purchase from a site that has content in their native language or one they are comfortable with.

Over 100 million people access web pages in a language other than English.
Over 50% of Web Users speak a native language other than English. Visitors stay for twice as long if a website is in their own language

Conclusion

The Internet is the hub of intense e-commerce and social networking activity today with many sites enjoying a large subscriber base, and transacting huge volumes of sales, at all hours of the day and night. A good web content translator must be mindful of the localization aspect of the specialized translation work, especially when translating web content, so the communication reaches the audience in just the way it is intended.

About the Author:

Armando Riquier is a freelance expert translator and writer working in collaboration with the Tectrad group, a professional services agency specialized in website translations and localizations in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, etc.