Website Localization
Websites represent an invaluable way for companies to offer their services and products. The possibility of offering websites to an international audience multiplies potential clients for a company, as well as potential revenues. The relevant internationalization and localization of a company’s website is therefore not only a matter of corporate image, but also of business strategy.
First, let us define website localization. It is the process of adapting linguistic, functional and cultural requirements to the target language or country. Before deciding to localize a website, the company must first determine what level of localization is most desirable for their specific goals. The following are a few aspects that need to be considered beforehand:
Total vs. partial localization
Global vs. local content
Language tiers
Return on investment (ROI)
Cost savings
Increased revenue opportunities
User satisfaction
Other benefits: brand consistency
Secondly, it is very important to design the structure of the website before translation, in order to reduce potential localization problems such as linking, references to other files or creating, deleting and updating information. Areas such as technical complexity, download times (especially considering international markets where Internet access is expensive), and the content layout need to be examined. If this job is not done properly, the process of converting a monolingual site into a bilingual or multilingual site can present difficult challenges. When designing a website for localization, it is important to distinguish between the core content (which is relevant to all markets) and the locale-specific content, since this will imply different localization workflows.
Visit Spanish Website Translation and Spanish Localization for more detailed information.