Translate websites - achieve global success
A multilingual online presence brings many benefits: greater reach, more conversions and a better search engine ranking. Here is your checklist for translating online shops and websites.
Translate online shops and websites for increased sales
There are various ways in which you can combine Computer Aided Translations (CAT) with the know-how of language experts. We'll tell you how to make the best use of both. And the best news of all: Translating websites and online shops this way is inexpensive. With the right use of translation tools, you can reach the world — without it costing the earth.
What types of translation are there?
Software translates your content by choosing the most likely word choice based on statistical learning. The result is an understandable and passable text, but it’s quite easy to see it’s a translation: Without post-processing, you shouldn’t put it online.
Post-editors finalise the results of the computer translation. If they are properly briefed, the result is usually very good and completely sufficient for most online shop and website translations. For example, if you are reading this text here in English, Italian or French, it is a human hybrid translation. If you read it in German, it's the original — hopefully you haven't noticed which version you have in front of you.
A translator translates the text into his/her native language.
The better “translation”: Here, the text for the target market will be rewritten by native language experts after a comprehensive briefing.
Localisation means that the content is not only translated, but adapted to the respective target market. Places, people, brand names, but also sayings or idioms should be as familiar to readers in the other language as those of the original text. For example, if a prominent person is mentioned in the text, the target-language text should include a person who has a comparable level of awareness in the other language region. This is the only way to ensure that the text "works" in the other language.
How are translations created quickly and reliably?
If you are generally satisfied with the concept, content and structure of your texts, it is not necessarily worthwhile to pay for copywriters or translators to rewrite them for the target market. In this case, CAT tools are the best choice to translate your text using machine learning. These tools translate all content at a speed that no human would ever manage. Grammatical, content-related and stylistic deficiencies are then corrected by native post-editors. They finalise the texts according to your briefing so that they are optimised for both readers and search engines.
What other types of computer-generated texts are there?
You can transcribe spoken text using automatic speech recognition (speech-to-text). Based on AI technologies, the software accurately transcribes speech into text by transcribing content from stored files in real time. The technology also plays an important role in optimising navigation in voice commanding products — an important feature in the times of Siri, Alexa, etc.
What errors do you need to avoid with speech-to-text and AI translations?
Take voice transcripts in videos as an example: Some employees at greatcontent like to kite surf in the summer and watch videos of cool kite surfers in winter, to keep in touch with that summer feeling. One of the big names is Mitu Monteiro, who has toured all of the islands of his home country, Cape Verde, with his board and kite umbrella The transcript for the voiceover text can be shown in the video at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtMhULFCnyw. The problem with this is that transcription has been done only be a machine, the name Mitu is written as “me to” and the island “Santo Antão” is called “Sant in tau”, which is real a shame in a professional video like this. The example highlights a flaw in computer-based texts and translations: It is important to ensure that mistakes such as these are avoided and that the text is not only comprehensible to the target-speaking readers, but just as appealing to that of the original language.
Who ensures the 100% accuracy of translations?
Post-editors They are fluent in the language of the original text and compare it with the machine-made translation in their native language and check whether everything is correct in terms of language and content.
Why use Artificial Intelligence as a translator?
Computers never take a break, never need a vacation, and are in no way demanding. This is your chance to pick up speed and translate your content into several languages at the same time. You have to include real language experts to ensure quality. Post editors take over the job and find the smallest errors that the CAT tool might make.
What can machine learning do?
The software remembers the terms and phrases used and employs them again and again. This makes the translation consistent and all texts appear as if from one source.
What are Neural Machine Translations?
Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is a technique that combines machine translation with an artificial neural network to predict the likelihood of a word sequence. NMT is the foundation of Google Translate and DeepL, whose translation results are already very good — just not as good as those of real, sentient language experts.
What content of online store websites can AI translate?
Some page content, such as forms, registration, contact details or the ordering process, can be easily translated automatically. Even with short listings, such as those found in product descriptions, or with general FAQs, translation tools will usually deliver very good results. But of course, it doesn't work without human support. This is also the case when it comes to longer, more complex or stylistically sophisticated texts. Automatic translations reach their limits, especially when it comes to descriptions of special requirements and mechanisms.
Which content from online shops and websites should be translated?
In principle, a complete online store can be translated, but it’s worth considering whether some content that is less interesting for the target market can be excluded. For example, winter coats in Ghana or swimming trunks in the Arctic.
How important is the translation of meta information?
Meta information such as meta title or meta description must be translated correctly, as it will affect the search engine results, which means that they decide whether the page will be shown on the results page. Image information such as alt tags may not necessarily be visible at first glance, but it is also important for search engine optimisation (SEO), so they must be translated too. Remember: Don’t forget about the meta information when translating. Together with the main keywords, they determine the ranking of the page.
When translating an online store, how can you ensure that all content is translated?
In many content management systems (CMS) such as Wordpress, you can easily create a translation. You can use crawler software to keep track of the various pages that are being translated. What free crawler software is available to online shops that want to translate their websites? If you’re trying to avoid spending more money, you can use the free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider. However, this offers significantly fewer configuration options than the paid version and is limited to a maximum of 500 URLs. Another option is SISTRIX Smart. This tool can be useful, but it is also limited to 1,000 URLs. If you want to crawl larger websites, you don't necessarily have to reach for your wallet: For example, SiteAnalyzer and Beam Us Up are two free tools that are unlimited in crawl size.
What role does SEO play when translating your online shop or website?
Keywords should never be simply translated literally, because their translations usually don’t correspond to those that the target-language users would be familiar with. You should definitely do a target market analysis per country, for example with Google Adwords.
What needs to be considered when translating files?
The time factor. Allow sufficient time for translations, at least two weeks for an important document, depending on the scope and level of complexity. This is because the translation of business documents must be particularly thorough — after all, every word is important in contracts or other legally binding documents. Of course, your target language also plays a role. A translator for English or French may be found faster than language experts for Urdu or Swahili.
Who is best suited?
We have specialised language experts across various fields. Certain documents or officially relevant documents may, for example, only be translated by state-sworn translators. greatcontent's post-editors are characterised by a deep understanding of language and years of experience. Unlike state-sworn translators, working with them is not quite as expensive. And one more advantage: All of our post editors have a special area of expertise, so when casting for a particular project, we can choose from 30,000 linguists to decide who is best in your particular area.
Become internationally successful!
greatcontent brings AI and post editors together so that you can have all the content of your e-shop translated quickly and efficiently into many languages. For ten years we have continuously optimized our technology and maintain our linguists' community - this pays off for your online store or website translation.
