A multilingual web site is becoming a necessity for international businesses. With your website translated, you will not only benefit from increased traffic to your website but from visitors who will find it easier to browse your site in their native language.
Is it worth translating your company’s web site into a foreign language? The answer is yes if your business is not entirely focused on the South African market. You might think that your web site in English, as the most important language in the world, should be sufficient. Think again. We forget that one third of all internet users do not speak English and therefore our “international” site is actually losing out from potential clients.
A multilingual web site is becoming a necessity for international business for different reasons:
- Multilingual web sites allow you to enter new markets.
- They will increase the visibility of your website on the internet.
- They allow your visitors to surf quickly and efficiently in their own language
- And they will make your company more competitive.
Once you have decided that you want your site translated, it is crucial to have it done the right way. Accurate translation requires an understanding of the context and of the structure and rules of a language. A perfect translation makes the reader feel as if the content was not translated, but originally written in the target language. It takes into consideration the culture, style and language of the target audience. It is a fact that a bad translation is worse than no translation at all as the foreign client picks up the “low budget” vibe of the business which creates a negative image.
Search engine optimization is the magic word in internet marketing. The HTML text on your web site is scanned by search engines (like Google) to find keywords which users look for. If your web site is translated into another language, the users looking for information in their own language find your site. If not, your web site is not picked up.
So, once you have made your decision to have your web site translated, do it in an appropriate way. It is an investment that pays.