Being accessible with your content is becoming more and more crucial in the online world. The more accessible your content, the bigger the audience you will reach, ultimately leading to more sales.
The main focus when translating your content is to ensure that it’s as perfect as you can get it. The text should sound and feel as it was written in the language, natively. These means that putting it into an automated translator (machine translation) is not going to be the result you want.
It is always best to assign the translation to a professional translator, who will translate your web content, proofread it and review it again after you have implemented on your website. But if you decide to do this yourself, here are some tips you need to be aware of. These are also good tips for the content in your native language.
The Basics
No matter what language you are writing in there are always some basic rules that apply. The first rule is your spelling and grammar. You can utilize apps or tools that your software has such as spell check and grammar check by changing the language of choice. This ensures that the software is checking the language you are writing in, not the default language of the software.
You also want to pay particular attention to any rules or common practices that the language you are translating into uses to increase the authenticity of the content. Each language has its own idiosyncrasies and slang, which may be relevant to your translation.
Focus on Context
If you have ever read a translation gone wrong, you will know where we are headed with this one. Sometimes a direct translation from one language to another is not accurate. This means that the original context of the text changes when we do the translation. It’s extremely important to focus on the context and not direct translation. Yes, sometimes it sounds better in one language than another, but the point is always context. If we change the context, we change the meaning of the text which can discredit the entire piece of content.
Before you complete the translation make sure you compare the two pieces to ensure context is not lost in any areas of the content.
Be Mindful of Root Words
It happens to the best of us, but not all words mean the exact same thing across languages. When you see a word that is used in both languages, it does not mean it directly copies over to the new translated text. You must focus on the meaning of that word in the language you are translating from and the new language you are writing in. Using the same word could change the entire context of the content, which as discussed above is important to pay attention to.
SEO Matters
Yes, SEO still matters when it comes to translated text. This is because you can use google in many languages. If I wanted to look something up in Spanish, I’m going to type the Spanish word into google and it will pull up the top sites based on the Spanish key words, not the English ones.
When translating content, you need to consider the keywords of the original content and make sure similar words, with the right context are used in the translated piece to continue ranking on google. This includes the headers you are using.
If you need help with this, you can look up the related words or other keywords in the language of choice on google while you are completing the translation. Just remember to keep the original context.
Overall, when you are translating content it’s important to check your basics such as grammar and spelling, stay focused on the context and roots words and keep your SEO in check. Make sure to read your work over several times and of course compare the two pieces to ensure top quality.
If you need assistance with your translations, we can help!