Prepare your site for translation

You know you need a multilingual Web site.
Here are some steps that will help you
save time and money.

Localizing your Web site in several languages is a way to increase your site's interest and potential market. But localization can be a complicated process. Obviously, your site's content and presentation must be adapted to the contemporary realities of your target markets. However, there are a number of important details that are frequently overlooked: culture-specific graphics, icons, local currency, date formats, units of measure, keywords, hot keys, etc.

CONTENT ADAPTATION

To correctly adapt content to a local market, it is essential that you rely on language specialists living in the local market or companies that make use of such specialists. A company that takes its work seriously doesn't simply resell the work of translators scattered throughout the world. It provides editorial control, based on the same procedures used in the publishing industry.

• Writing. Your text is written (or translated) by a professional with a background in your industry.
  
• Editing. Your text is edited (or adapted) by a publicist or journalist (always local), who will rewrite the text to appeal to the target market.
  
• Editorial oversight. Your text is checked by a competent professional, who will make sure that your text is complete and will harmonize the presentation among the various languages, which is crucial to ensuring the consistency of your Web site.
  
• Copy editing. Once the text is in place, independent copy editors, who are seeing the text for the first time, will go over your text with a fine-tooth comb, looking for typos, punctuation errors, missing text, etc., that may have been overlooked by the editor or author.

Preparation. If your text has been written clearly and simply, the translation process will be much more efficient.

If your Web site makes use of advertising slogans, puns, specific historical or cultural references, the process of adaptation will be more difficult-and more costly.

One way of making sure the translation process goes smoothly is to pay close attention to the consistency of your terminology. If you use "automobile" in one place in your text, don't use "car" in other places, you risk slowing down the translation process. Try to limit the number of truly technical terms and use terminology that is easily understandable by your distributors.

Here too, a company that takes its work seriously knows how to organize your project to prevent such problems from occurring. Proper preparation will also simplify future updates. Serious localizers use specialized tools that create personalized text database in all the languages you work with. As your site is translated (or updated), the software suggests previously translated and approved expressions to the translator. This not only ensures greater consistency (no matter which translators work on the project) but your costs decrease: as the database gets larger, the number of previously translated terms or expressions increases.

The localization process is essential to maintaining your corporate image and ensuring the quality of your content. The risks are considerable: even a small error can have a significant impact on your site (recall the notoriously misleading instructions that used to be included with Japanese watches). And visitors to your site will judge you by what they see. Your text may read "Beste service we provide," but it's unlikely that you'll convince your potential customers.

ONE IP ADDRESS PER LANGUAGE?

Many robots and Web crawlers are racists. They start out by taking an interest in your site, then discover a language they don't recognize. Terrified, they scurry back to more familiar territory. To increase traffic to your Web site, you can register one domain name for each language and ask your service provider to simply create a mirror or clone for the different languages. If, for example, your initial Web site is smith.com, you can simply register smith-japan.com, smith-deutschland.com, smith-espana.com, etc. You can also register a name translated into an Asian language without using Latin characters.

IF YOU PREFER TO USE A SINGLE IP ADDRESS

Building a "translation-ready" Web site

Architecture
Today, your Web site architecture needs to be designed (flags, as many subdirectories as needed) for localization. Make sure your localizer is familiar with compatibility issues and has access to the necessary tools (a version of DreamWeaver in each language, preferably running on a localized version of the operating system). Start planning the layout of your pages ahead of time to make sure the localization process goes smoothly and is based on the appropriate architecture.
Don't use too many dropdown menus.
If you're using CGI scripts, pay close attention to the new Web addresses, which could be a problem. When designing pages trying to remember that some users are accustomed to different systems of measurement, time, and currency display.

Codes:
The character encoding or charset enables the browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, or Copernic) to recognize the language and automatically open the HTML page using the appropriate language code (ISO code).
For European languages, there are relatively few problems.

For Asian languages, however, Unicode or double-byte characters are needed. For certain less common languages (Sanskrit, for example), graphics are needed to display characters (image maps are used for interactive sites).

If you decide to use a double-byte character set, the characters used for each language must be indicated in the HTML source code.
For example, for sites that are going to be translated into simplified Chinese (the most widely read version of the alphabet), Big5 encoding is used, while for Japanese sites, Shift-JIS is used. In general it's better to limit the encoding to a single format and create other local IP addresses to avoid confusing any search robots that scan your site.

Because the translator won't be able to determine which text needs to be translated, all code should be separate from the text to be translated. This will help avoid a number of potential problems in the future. Also, the presence of transcoding errors will prevent the translator from concentrating on text content and will trip up any automated spell checkers.

Sites that use a lot of dynamic HTML often make use of databases whose content is constantly changing. These texts can be exported to HTML or Excel before being given to a translator. Bear in mind, however, that spreadsheets such as Excel and Quattro Pro can cause endless problems for translators and generally slow down the translation process. Similarly, ASP formats are difficult to manage for translation. If you must use ASP files, consider this beforehand when planning your budget since most translation companies charge extra for files in these formats.

Remember that languages like Arabic and Hebrew are written from right to left (although the latest versions of Internet Explorer can automatically display reverse text).

Graphics

Place all graphics in a separate directory (make the site architecture as clear and consistent as possible).

Indicate which graphics contain text for translation. And when you're designing your site, place text next to graphics whenever possible.

GIFs and JPEGs that contain text are a problem. The graphic will need to be redone, which takes an enormous amount of time and often results in the degradation of the original image. It's much more efficient to provide the translation company with graphics in PSD, Corel Draw, or Illustrator format, and archive the original images.

Leave enough space to accommodate expanded text (especially true for languages such as German). The degree of expansion depends on the specific language.

Supply a list of all fonts or supply the fonts used in any graphics. Trying to find a font to match your design is very time consuming for the localizer.

Sounds complicated? In a way it is. But if you compare the savings provided by the localization process to the cost of a global advertising campaign using traditional media, we think you'll agree with us that it's the best choice you can make in the long run.

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