Important Elements of Website Translation Localization

Author: ateleco1 | Posted: 02.06.2012

From social networking to business communication, internet has become a vital part of our lives. Witnessing the growing emphasize of internet on people's life, businesses do not want to let any stone unturned in realizing the full potential of internet for globalization of a business. In order to go global, a business has to hire services like application localization, website translation localization and software localization. Globalization of an application means that user interface and its functionality in an application is easy to understand, access and used by all people around the world. Localization is a process of customizing an application for a particular culture or locale.

In competitive web world, you need to have a website that can interact with customers in their own language. It is not enough to get your website translated into another language to capture the audience of any particular region. In order to make your presence effective and adaptable to a particular locale, it must be transformed with help of translation localization and application localization experts to create desire effect.

Website translation localization is a process of transforming existing website as per the culture of targeted audience to make it easily accessible by them. It is a multi-layer process and needs both programming expertise and cultural linguistic skills. If any one of them will be missed, website application localization process may get failed to bring desired response.

There are many things that needs to be considered while localizing a business website:

? Website translation is not as simple as it seems. It requires proficiency in both, the language and culture of the targeted audience. While localizing a website code issue is also need to be concerned. UTF-8 is a general code which is accepted by browsers of most of the countries.

? One must analyze what sort of information is needed to be carry over to the new site. You should not assume that all information on English site will be transformed into foreign site. If your targeted culture relies more on content for information, then you need to translate content. If your targeted culture relies more on images, then you have to take help of graphics to make your website vibrant.

? There is also need to adjust font size in localized website. For instance, in most of the western websites, size of the letters is around 8PX in measurement, while in Chinese website it is more than 12 PX. Similarly, letters in Korean and Japanese websites are also bigger in size. Once the font size is adjusted, appropriate changes are made in the structure of website to maintain its original appearance.

? You will also have to consider people's belief in relevance to your targeted culture. For example, no. 13 is considered unlucky by many western countries. Similarly, using fingers for an OK sign or V sign may mean differently to different cultures.

? You also need to consider people's popular belief in mind while deciding back ground and other colors to be added to the website. For example, In Japan, white color is associated with mourning, Islamic community usually loathes yellow color, Red is considered auspicious in China. Thus, you have to choose the color of the website wisely.

? If website translation localization company can provide you value added services like website optimization, it will be much beneficial for your business. An optimized website enjoys better rankings and better visibility over search engines.

Considering above things in mind will help to make your website translation localization effective in bringing desired response of your online presence.



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