How to Translate a Website: Preparing for Internationalisation
If you are wondering how to translate a website, get ready to enter the world of internationalisation. Why? Because before adapting your content for a different language, your website needs to be ready to support this effort. And that means you need to have the proper strategy in place to tackle this complex task.
But what does internationalisation in business mean, and how does it affect you? We have mentioned before the importance of developing an international content strategy to tap into a new audience. Localising and translating a website means creating a site that looks, feels, and reads local to maximise user engagement. Internationalisation has to do with the work a company does before localising its content to support those efforts.
What Is Internationalisation?
Internationalisation is the process that prepares your website for localisation. It ensures that your site’s platforms, workflows, and architecture can be easily translated and adapted into local languages and cultures. It is often referred to as i18n.
The goal of internationalisation is to make sure your content management system (CMS), website, and other back-end technologies are both functionally and technically ready to go global. While translation and localisation will follow internationalisation, website internationalisation should occur earlier to support multilingual web publishing processes.
Is internationalisation necessary to translate a website’s content? Consider the differences between languages that use different alphabets or reading directions. Depending on your expansion goals, your website should support various characters or reading directions beyond the Latin alphabet.
Internationalisation Tips: How to Translate a Website
Website Internationalisation: Separate Site Variables and Constants
To properly prepare your website for internationalisation, it is crucial to separate your website’s variables and constants. These refer to the content available to users on the front-end and elements such as source code and text strings, usually handled by programmers or page admins.
One key benefit is that once you complete this analysis, you won’t need to redo it for different languages or locales. Separating constants and variables ensures your time and efforts focus on the content that needs attention rather than creating a new website from scratch.
Site constants include:
- Brand names
- Source code
- Logos
- Generic user interface elements and navigation
- Global page templates
Site variables include:
- International currencies
- Localisable text strings
- Conventions for phone numbers and addresses
#OptimationalTip: When tackling internationalisation, separate your website constants from your website variables. This will help avoid unnecessary translation work.
Multilanguage Support: The Importance of Unicode
In the past, computers used encoding systems to assign specific numbers to represent characters in different languages. However, no encoding system had enough characters to cover every language, leading to issues when data passed between platforms or encodings. Unicode addressed these problems.
Unicode is the industry standard for encoding systems, providing a unique number for each of the hundreds of thousands of characters found in languages. Using Unicode will help you create a website that supports multilingual content and minimises risks.
#OptimationalTip: Using Unicode will help you create a strong foundation for your multilingual website. It will also help you avoid potential data gaps.
Global Website Templates & Localisation
Instead of creating a new website for each new locale, creating a single website template that can be adapted and modified to suit specific needs is a much more efficient use of your time and resources.
Developing a global template that can fit the needs of various locales will mean extensive testing and planning. Additionally, it will need deep knowledge of the potential consumers you will be targeting.
The Internationalization Working Group offers a series of simple adjustments that can help you avoid common blunders that will become a problem down the line. For example, mentioning “lang” attributes in HTML tags to set your site up for accommodating a different language.
Other tips include avoiding embedding text in images and typing it out instead. This approach makes it easier to manage localised versions of your website and provides another opportunity to create SEO-optimised content.
#OptimationalTip: Creating a global template for your website will ensure your time and efforts are used efficiently when adapting content to different locales. Conduct thorough market research of your potential target audiences first!
Ensure Your CMS Is Global-Ready
The CMS you choose will significantly impact your multilanguage efforts. Your CMS should enable collaboration for managing, publishing, and creating content. Its limitations will affect the success of your project.
When selecting a CMS, ensure it integrates seamlessly with your applications, offers a versatile workflow engine for translation, and supports the third-party plugins you need.
Also, finding a CMS that enables you to access things like version control, variation support, and content change across several multilingual websites will make your life easier!
#OptimationalTip: Choose a CMS that provides the necessary applications, plugins, and workflows to support your translation efforts.
In Conclusion: Tackling Internationalisation
Whether expanding into new countries or managing a complex website, investing time in internationalising your website now can save you significant costs in the future. Adhering to internationalisation best practices may have upfront costs but will save time and money in the long run.
For more information on how to translate your website or if you are looking for a translation partner to provide website translation services—CONTACT US TODAY.
