Multilingual Websites

Global Marketing7th of August 2013

Contents

1.Introduction

2.How to build a multilingual website

3.Conclusion

1. Introduction

The case for translated web pages. Example: Facebook in French After Facebook launched a French language interface in February of 2008, the

site’s popularity skyrocketed, growing 443 percent (…) to an estimated 12 million visitors.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/17/facebook-is-big-in-france/

Non-English-speaking user increasing

2002 – 65% and 80% of all websites were in English

2007 – 45% of all websites were in English

End of 2009 the percentage of English-speaking users dropped to 39.5%

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, October 2009:

"Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese language content.“

1. Introduction

Main items to consider:

Centralized vs. regional website setup Web design Length and height of text and text labels in pages, navigation menus and

forms Handling of dynamic content Language variants Handling of product names Translation process Google Webmaster Guideline and Search Engine Optimization Character set and language display Browser testing

2. Building a multilingual website

Key questions to ask early on in the project:

Centralized vs. regional? What is the default or source language? How are the navigation menus set up? Static (normal .html pages) vs. dynamic (news, blogs, Twitter, Facebook)

content? Are all static pages translated into all languages? Different legal requirements per country? Local content to suit local needs and tastes? Multimedia content (audio, video)?

2.1 Centralized vs. regional

Web design must support multiple languages

Language toggle button Offer a non-Javascript alternative for users that have Javascript disabled Art work and design must be culturally acceptable in all the countries being

targeted Example: show people from different ethnic backgrounds if target

audience is in USA Avoid art work, colours and designs that are offensive or considered unlucky.

Get local feedback. Possibility to invert web design for languages that read from right to left such as

Arabian Support browser „Zoom In“ functionality to increase text size of website

2.2 Web design

Consider length and height of text and text labels in pages, navigation menus and forms

Web design must be dynamic, length of a navigation menu entry or label should not be fixed

Example: French tends to be longer than English.

Example: Chinese and Korean and Japanese characters have a minimum height requirement for labels and forms.

2.2 Web design

Some languages have many variants:

US English vs UK English Swiss French, French French and Canadian French. Chinese simple vs Chinese traditional Portugal vs Brazilian Portuguese

This depends on the main markets addressed, but can become very complicated in a centralized setup

Example from CLS website: Fax vs Télécopieur

2.3 Language variants

Translate product names? Get local advice!

Example from CLS website: China-based translators recommended localizing product names such as

„CLS Machine Translation “ in Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simple

For large set of corporate terms CLS can build a corporate language dictionary, see http://www.cls-communication.com/en/services/other-services/terminology-services/online-corporate-dictionaries

2.4 Handling of product names

In what format are translations carried out? Word.docs ? Directly within the CMS? HTML? XML?

Example from CLS website: set up the default language English, completed all the content for this and then exported the files to XML and then started the translation process in parallel.

Benefit: avoided a lot of small errors such as wrong links because we used XML instead of Cut and Paste from Word, this is esp. true for Asian languages where you don't understand any of the characters.

2.5 Translation process

Follow Google guidelines to build effective web pages: Keyword research – identify 5 to 12 keywords

that people may enter to find a service or product

Develop interesting and useful content around these keywords Incorporate keywords intelligently and in a

coherent manner Write in short sentences Use well-structured text with headings Write for people, not search engines

Besides technical requirements, quality and frequency of content is important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

CLS offers writing, editing and translation services for multilingual website content.

2.6 Google Webmaster Guideline and Search Engine Optimization

Character set and language display:

UTF-8 : always use this character set Display language based on browser language settings

Spanish browser – Spanish version of website Chinese Trad browser – Chinese Trad version of website

Test multilingual content management systems early

2.7 Technical aspects

Test website in all major browsers: http://yuilibrary.com/yui/environments/

2.8 Browser testing

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3. Conclusion

Good reasons why you need a multilingual website today rather than later:

Shift away from English internet users Cost Effective Marketing Tool New Customers Beat Competitors Culturally Sensitive Search Engines

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| Presentation for XY | Author | Date

Contact

Legal notice

CLS Communication AGSaegereistr. 338152 Glattbrugg-Zurich

Tel. +41 44 206 68 68Email: info-ch@cls-communication.com

www.cls-communication.com

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