What is website localisation?
The expression “localisation” refers to the adaptation of content or a product so that it suits a specific country or market while adapting the cultural, linguistic, legal, and political differences. Localisation is commonly confused with translation, which is the process used to convert words, phrases, and sentences from a single language into another language. Even though these terms may appear similar, translation is typically just one feature of the localisation process. Website localising isn’t website translation because when localising a website it is a matter of adjusting the way material is presented so that it fits the targeted market. This includes the way payments are made that suit the targeted customer’s preferences and symbols such as colors that attract a customer to buy a product. Before your localisation strategy is likely to be successful you should follow a process as explained below:
Decide on a localisation strategy
This should take place before starting the website localization, so you should determine the localisation strategy which is basically deciding how you are going to adapt your advertising technique to suit new markets and countries in such a way that it is likely to suit your brand. This will require a certain amount of market research to help to calculate which of the many languages you would prefer to use as part of your localisation process. This means determining who your targeted markets are while also considering different cultures, languages, and social norms attached to those markets.
When creating a localisation strategy for a website, you’ll need to understand the following:
- Which countries and markets you would like to target, as well as the culture, buying preferences, and preferable payment options for those markets?
- Decide how the brand will translate into the local languages, including voice and tone to either a mobile or desktop design.
- Know which members of your team have the capabilities of taking responsibility for localisation, whether it is a designer or a developer.
Consider localisation when designing web pages
Traditionally, a business would design a website to suit just one language, but today this isn’t considered to be cost-effective. Internationalisation involves both the development and design of a website that can be localised and adapted for different regions, languages, and cultures. Internationalisation and localisation may appear to be interchangeable, but they are complementary and can’t be separated. Internationalisation means considering cultural formattings like the correct format for numbers, personal information, time zones, and text formatting.
Depending on the scale and size of a website, localisation can involve several groups of collaborators that could include the following:
- translators;
- product managers;
- marketers,
- developers;
- copywriters.
When the designing of a website is complete it is now time to start the translation process. This usually includes both machine and human translators. These translation tools complement one another. Machine translation is suitable for translating simple ideas and sentences, or phrases that are often used as it reduces the cost but increases the speed. However, when more complex ideas and sentences need to be translated such as creative language or idioms, critical or sensitive data, it is preferable to use a human translator.
After the translations have been completed, they should be tested. This helps to verify whether the quality of the localisation for a targeted market is market-friendly such as layout, color, and word choice.
Finally, it is also important to use tools that can measure quality and are able to correct spelling, typos, or grammatical mistakes.