Translation Services: Trans-Coding your Multi-Lingual Site Content

So you've decided to go multi-lingual with your website. It's a great idea, and a sure fire way to gain instant access to a global audience and market. One of the first things that will likely engage your attention at this point is that of finding a good business translation service provider who will deliver a faithful representation of your web content in the target languages. As a matter of fact, you will have to go a step or two further than that. To publish your website in another language, you need the expertise and all the elements that go into creating content for a completely new website. You will want people who have expertise in writing and can even think in that language.

As anyone who uses the Internet frequently would be aware, content is the most crucial part of a webpage. You might have the best graphics, nifty animation, and other web page design elements, but remember that your visitors are looking for some key information, in a language they can understand. The sooner they find it, the greater will be the motivation to navigate through the rest of your site and read what you have to offer.

Your corporate website has its reputation to keep up. Its foreign language translations should sound as professional and crisp in delivering the message as does the original one in English. It's important to have the website translation service done by an experienced person who is capable of 'thinking' in the foreign language, not merely applying text-book knowledge or a dictionary to deal with the job. An IDC survey has found that visitors are four times more likely to purchase from a site that communicates in the customer's language. It stands to reason that when the content in your English language web page is rendered in French, you must put it in a way that appeals to the French audience, as the customer must feel comfortable with the language. The same goes for German, Mandarin or any other language version/s that you choose for publishing your website in.

Culture is a deep rooted facet of the people of every nation or region, and the way to communicate effectively will be built around these cultural practices and beliefs, of which language usage forms an integral part. As Forrester Research has found, visitors tend to stay tuned for twice as long when browsing a website is in their own language, as compared to a foreign language website. Clearly, the nuances of the language will have to be well understood if the effort expended in putting together a multi-lingual website is to have its targeted result. Carefully rendered business translation services which capture the essential meaning of the original text both in letter and in spirit as also deliver the missive in a way that appeals to the reader is a complex process, involving translation, trans-coding and localization.

When reading through a web page that has been constructed with the care it deserves and culture-centric translation services, the visitor would never suspect that the website was ever translated at all! This is because the translator's wizardry is evident in the way he has adapted the text to the culture, style and language of the target audience.

Armando Riquier is a freelance expert legal and finance translator and writer, participating in the Tectrad team. Tectrad is a professional translation services agency specializing in business translation.