The new year is fast approaching and after a year of many changes, pivots, and adaptations, it’s time to prepare for what the new year may bring.
One important part of owning a business is making sure your content, products and information is accessible by everyone. The simple way of putting it is that the more accessible your business is the more sales you will generated, especially if you are tapping into a global market.
An easy way to ensure that your business is more accessible, is to get your website translated into the primary language of every country you market to.
To help make this process easier, we’ve outlined a few steps you can take before the new year to prepare your website for translation.
Clean Up Your Website
Before you sign up for any translation service, you should clean up your current website to keep the cost reasonable. One of the first things you can do is remove any pages or products you no longer need on your site. From here take a quick scan through every page and remove any copy that no longer serves its purpose. This will give the translator less copy to have to translate, especially if you are no longer using it.
Update Your Images
If you have any text over images, try to move it over next to the image. You can always move it back later, but text over images can make it difficult for a translator, ultimately making them spend more time on your site. Any images that are on your site should have ALT text for accessibility. Make sure you update the ALT text for all images on your site before handing it over to the translator. This will allow then to translate the appropriate ALT text for the image.
Do Your Research
When you are ready to get your website translated, it’s important to do your research before you say yes to anyone. The first thing you should research is the languages you would like your website to be translated to. Stay focused on common languages, unless you market your business to a country with uncommon ones. You want to make sure you cater towards your customers here and not just what you think is right.
The next thing you want to research is who is going to do the work for you. Unfortunately, like any other industry there can be people out there who aren’t who they say they are. Look for a reputable company that has testimonials, their own website and of course easily accessible contact information.
Choose Language Marketplace
At the end of the day, when you are ready to get your website translated, we can help. We offer translation services in more than 140 languages. We are both CAN/CGSB 131.10 and ISO 17100, which means we translate with one translator, another one proofreads and then the file is finalized before delivering it to you. All by human beings!
For websites, we also include at no extra charge, a final review of the website, after your webmaster or desktop publisher has created the new pages in the new language(s) to ensure nothing was missed from the translation process to creating the webpage. This ensures that when you are ready to publish your new page(s) they are ready for your market.