Today every self-respecting company understands the advantages
and power of the internet and runs one or several
web sites advertising its products or services online.
We all want to be recognised worldwide and invest
a lion's share of our budget in offline international
marketing.
At the same time we often forget about the advantages of
international internet marketing. All that we can
think of is creating another .com website in English,
adding the word "international" to its
title. Why do we forget that one third of all internet
users do not speak English, and thus our "international"
site is passing by all this mass of potential clients
(business partners)? With constantly growing quantity
and quality of non-English material on the Net they
are more likely to surf in their own language.
Today a multilingual website is becoming a necessity for
international business due to a number of convincing
reasons:
SEO Marketing.
Multilingual web sites allow you to enter new markets.
Local language search engines will index your site
and give you new links from within this market area.
In most non-English speaking countries, regional
search engines in their native language play much
greater role than English-speaking Google, Yahoo
and MSN. Hence, you gain better positions, more
new visitors to your site (i.e. more potential customers)
and more sales.
Company Image.
Multilingual sites create an image of a serious
and respectable international business, and will
win over visitors from companies who have not made
this effort.
Customer-centric approach.
It allows your visitors to surf quickly and efficiently
in their own language. This gives your company and
products an advantage over your less prepared competitors.
Now you clearly understand that website translation can be
a great help in attracting foreign public to your
business. However it has to be done in such a way
that people will end up buying your product.
To have a website translated means much more than get mere
text translation. There are numerous factors that
have to be taken into consideration. Actually, it
is more correctly to speak about website localisation,
when you want the site successfully working in the
market of your target countries.
Localisation
is defined as modifying a product to make it usable
and suitable to a target market.
First
of all, it implies culture-centric translation.
Perfect culture-centric
translation makes the reader feel as if the content
was not translated, but originally written in the
target language. It takes into consideration the
culture, style and language of the target audience.
Using
electronic translations for this purpose is not
a good idea. The decision to have your site translated
by a human being, preferably a native speaker, familiar
with the culture, terminology and sayings of the
target language, is an ideal one.
Then,
website localisation takes into account the appearance
of your web pages. Are there pictures, colours
or images that would cause offence? A good website
translation company will analyse your site and offer
you a cultural applicability consultation.
Further
more, decent website translators will offer an after-care
service that assists in helping you with the
small changes in future.
Some
translation companies will even provide you with
internet marketing services to help your
site achieve high visibility in the target country.
If
you are serious about promoting your business among
foreign internet users it is best to trust your
website translation to proven professionals. The
leading UK translation company, Lingo24 (http://www.lingo24.com)
can supply your company with these services.
Professional
website localisation and culture-centric
translation can become a very promising perspective
for your business.
http://www.lingo24.com/multilingual_website_design.html
http://www.lingo24.com/professional_translation.html
See
the author's biography here: http://www.e3internet.com/company-information/biographies/elena/
