Going global is not an act of good will — it is a smart and necessary business strategy. Establishing a global web presence provides one of the most affordable means of tapping into the international marketplace. An information-rich, well- published web site sells your products and services to potential clients around the world 24/7. In addition, multilingual content optimizes the effectiveness of your site by communicating with your customers in their language.

However, many multilingual web sites are not as effective as they could be because potential customers cannot find them using search engines. Because search engines typically provide over 87% of the traffic to a web site, companies that do not optimize their sites for search are missing opportunities to reach customers. This white paper addresses challenges unique to translated web sites for ranking high on search engines.

The potential of Localization

The potential in the global marketplace is huge. One billion people will have access to the Internet by the end of 2012 and 70 percent of these people will speak a language other than English. There are 128 million Chinese speaking Internet users alone. This is predicted to double within the next five years. Studies show that these Internet users are just like the rest of us: they rely heavily on websites in their native language to perform most tasks. What does this mean for businesses with websites trying to reach these markets? Something many companies are not paying enough attention to: localization.

As German Chancellor Willy Brandt once said, “If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying from you, dann müssen Sie in meiner Sprache sprechen.” (Translation: then you must speak my language.)

The value of web content, especially multilingual content, has never been as great as it is today. It is the medium through which your customers interact with you on the web. Whether it is booking a train ticket, sending a request for quote or comparing product features, your customers don’t see your physical presence, just your content. Your content stands in the frontline and represents your organization. For a web marketer, content is one of the most valuable business assets. Quality content can sell merchandises, deliver services, and build brands.

If your organization has invested in building great content, you must also actively promote it to maximize its visibility. Making it a best-kept secret doesn’t exactly do your content justice. “Launching a web site is a bit like building a store at the North Pole. Nobody knows you’re there unless you are actively promoting the site,” says Gerry McGovern, author of Content Critical.

The real challenge

While it is challenging to make an English web site that is search-engine friendly, it is even more so for multilingual sites, which face obstacles of language and regional filters, text display issues, translators not using the words customers expect, and so on.

Most companies miss potential customers by not effectively promoting their web site through the search engines. The problem is even more common for multilingual sites. Many well-localized web sites are not visited as frequently by international customers as they potentially could be because the
sites do not appear in searches for that country/region or language.

Why its essential

Having killer content on your site and not optimizing the web site for searches, is like having an award-winning movie that no one ever sees. Just as movie producers promote their movie to ensure a successful run, so must you invest in optimizing your web site for searching. Just as a movie must be subtitled or dubbed for international markets, so multilingual web sites must provide ways for search engines in the target languages and countries/regions to access the site. Optimizing web sites for search engines requires research in all the markets you are trying to reach, as well as training for the web team and translation team to ensure that they understand how search marketing works.

Get the best Translators

A solid search engine marketing strategy takes a great deal of human and financial resources to implement. The last thing you want is to see all that work undone in your international markets.

Your translation team has the ability to take your state-of-the-art search marketing campaign back to the Dark Ages. Unless you educate your translation team about why it is important to be search engine friendly and how to achieve that goal, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. Some of the common problems that occur when an English site is translated into other languages include the following:

• Obscure albeit technically accurate keywords are used, which greatly reduces the chances of your web site being found.
• Keywords are missing from all the strategic places, such as title tags and meta description tag.
• Language tags and encodings are improperly used, and as a result text does not display properly.
• Meta tags and Alt tags are not always translated.
• Translators compose for flow and tone only, without taking search engines into consideration.
• To avoid such pitfalls, we recommend that you do the following:
• Involve your translation vendor when planning keywords for your language sites.
• Develop a glossary that is strictly enforced throughout the translation process so that translators do not sway from researched, pre-approved search phrases.
• Provide an orientation session for the translation team on search engine friendly writing and strategic keyword placement.
• Conduct search engine quality assurance after translation is complete to check the completeness of translation, the proper encoding of the pages, and optimal placement of keywords.

Conclusion

The most effective search optimization effort uses terms that the customers use and builds links among other sites on the web. By implementing best practices in search optimization in English, and by carrying those best practices through all the language variants for your site, you can ensure that you reach all of your customers worldwide. The best way to ensure all these is by getting an experienced service of a company like World Copywriters

Multilingual search engine optimisation (SEO) is not an option for websites. SEO is an
absolutely essential step which every website needs before going “live.” SEO optimization is even more
critical when you have websites in multiple languages. Multilingual websites can thrive or fail based on
how well they are optimised for SEO in their global, target-language markets. Although your translation
company may have mastered best practices for multilingual SEO, you will need a sound strategy for SEO
in your source as well as target languages. SEO is a key component in your overall global search engine
marketing strategy.

Billions websites that provide useful information and interesting experiences for online users to navigate. In the fairly recent past, many web- marketers spent a lot of money on “User Experience” and copywriting to drive users to their web pages but neglected to spend very much effort on search engine optimization. Successful multilingual SEO starts with good content in your source language.

Don’t search for the perfect SEO recipe

There is no perfect recipe for SEO analysis. It will always be a unique experience, based on the website,
the market, the brand, the competitors and the problems being worked on, as well as the technology
in question. Therefore, instead of thinking of every possible component that could be a factor for SEO,
think of the top factors that will have the greatest impact SEO for your website in all target as well as
source languages.

SEO rewards are worth the effort

Focusing on these top factors in SEO, over time you will achieve measureable success. Although you
will probably not reach your goals “over night,” effective SEO will have a demonstrable effect on your
website visits and revenues. This is multiplied by the number of target language websites you may have,
with which your translation company can provide assistance. With the world as your market, you want
to ensure that your website content is attracting all potential customers in the language they can best
understand.

An example of our procedure to provide you with the best SEO for European markets

SEO strategy for Italy consisting of 6 stages:

1. Target user analysis

Each project is unique. That is why we first discuss with every customer what is it they would like to
achieve. Do you want to attract more customers from Italy? Is it retailers you are looking for? Or new
Italian business contacts? What are the typical characteristics of your customers (age, profession etc.)?
Are there any websites you consider competitors?

2. Keywords analysis

Once we have identified the target audience of your website, we conduct a detailed keywords analysis
to determine the most frequent searches your potential customers are performing when they are
looking for products or services like the ones of your company. Remember, your website needs to be
present among those search results in order to attract relevant traffic. And the more relevant traffic you
get, the more sales you make.

3. Content translation and copywriting

If you don’t have an Italian version of your website yet, our certified translators and in-house
copywriters will be happy to create one for you. High-quality content is vital both to attract potential
customers to your site and to appear among search engine results. This is why we always write with
both, humans and robots, in mind. To create texts that are loved by search engines and appreciated by
your customers, like a good conversation. Fresh, stimulating and always unique.

4. Website optimisation

Once the copywriting phase is completed, our Italian SEO specialists get to the groundwork – optimising
your website’s code and structure. There are numerous variables that contribute to a SEO-friendly
website. Not only meta tags, titles and descriptions are important – your website’s performance, light
code and usability are only a few of the intricate blend of technical factors that need to be considered
when optimising your website for major search engines.

5. Off-site activities

People only believe what they hear from trustworthy sources. Search engines are built to think the same
way: They try to quote the most trustworthy, popular and hence important sources first, to provide
users with the most useful content for their specific search. But how do you make sure that Google &
Co. consider your website a trustworthy and hence quotable source? Most importantly: if your website
is quoted by other important sources. With a combination of article marketing, social media marketing,
online directories, blogging and news, we help you build and maintain a positive reputation online that
will help your website achieve highest search engine results.

6. Monthly website analysis

And last, but not least: the monthly check up. It is not enough to relax once all the work is done – to
make sure your website constantly appears high in rankings and achieves the goals you are looking
for, it is necessary to perform a monthly analysis and, more importantly, to know how to interpret the
results and act on them. New Frontier Digital pulls monthly reports on your website’s performance,
visitor numbers, their browsers, main referral sites, bounce rates etc. – to constantly increase your
website’s traffic and excel among search engine results in Italy.

The Global Market

The global market is gradually shifting its axis from developed countries like U.S.A., Europe
to countries in Asia and Africa. The trend is very pronounced in industries like medical and
pharmaceuticals where the focus is rapidly moving to Asia and experts believe that the latter
would become the largest market for medicines in the near future. MNCs are increasingly
inclined to set up more research and development facilities and conduct more clinical trials in
certain Asia countries according to a survey by PwC. Africa is a sleeping giant at present and
business growth is expected come in fast pace in future.

Good Times Ahead

The above trend forebodes well for translators as both the continents have myriad of languages
in use. The demand will not be just translation with English as source or target language but
also other combinations like Spanish/Chinese, German/Korean, and French/Korean, Italian/
Hindi etc. as well.

Similarly the opportunities in Africa are huge. Although there are hundreds of local languages
spoken in Africa, they are still not very well developed. Business is predominantly conducted in
English, French, Portuguese and Arabic at present. Hence in the immediate future translation in
these language pairs viz. English/French, French/Arabic etc are expected to be in demand. Over
a period of time translation from / into the other African languages will also be required.

More Businesses Going For Translation Services

According to a Commonsense Advisory survey on global translation companies, the top
25 companies are reporting solid growth in revenues through localization, translation,
internationalization business. Each year they are reporting higher revenues than previous year
as well as the list is becoming more global. The top 25 list includes language service providers
from diverse range of countries like U.S., UK, Switzerland, China, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan,
Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

This growth augurs well for the future of both in house translators as well as freelancers.

Some of the reasons for this globalization trend include decoupling of the world economy
from the U.S. economy. As the global GDP share shifts from US and other European to
lesser known countries like Brazil, China, India, Russia, Korea etc. there is bound to be more
business interaction by these countries with the rest of the world. This will fuel more and more
translation services from and into the languages spoken in these emerging economies.

More Reasons Why Translation Is Essential

Another reason is multiculturalism which results in companies and governments striving to
meet the needs of diverse population at home and abroad. It attracts lot of public funds as
well as marketing dollars. Thus globalization forebodes well for translators and interpreters as
discussed in another blog and they can look ahead with optimism.

In-house translator or outsource translator?

Hiring an in-house translator does have its good points. You will talk to the translator face-to-face.
The translator can learn very well how your business is run, and might even be able to suggest ways to
improve the “original” English versions of your content. (Of course, an outsourced partner whom you
repeatedly work with might be able to do something similar.)

Then again, in-office professional translation can place a greater burden on the employer. Firstly,
you may have to help maintain the translator’s equipment. An outsourced professional translator, on
the other hand, is not “your” employee. If he/she experiences technical difficulties, he/she will take
responsibility for them—and for delivering their work on time, despite the problem.

You will also be able to pay an outsourced translator according to the amount of work you need done.
An in-office translator, on the other hand, is likely to want a regular wage or salary. Otherwise, why
come to the office regularly at all? Even if you have come to a satisfying, work-based agreement as to
fee, you will still have to go to the cost and effort of actually making space for the person in your office.
This will be a major concern for businesses that only want a few things translated, or have very small
premises.

Last but not least, there is also the issue of time. There are some things, like the translation of
correspondence with major foreign partners or customers, which need to be translated right away. It is
true that an in-house translator can be made to take care of the work quickly, since he/she is standing by
throughout the day. However, something similar can also be said for an outsourced translation service.
Translation services can put you in contact with people who can translate a single page of your
text within an hour from receiving it.

Ultimately, outsourced translation offers many of the same benefits as in-office service, with much more
convenience. Contact us so we can assist you to take your business global.

How a customer can get better translation

One of the most challenging aspects of global-scale translation is deciding on and creating a
corporate style for each locale. Every company has a specific way to speak to its audience in
domestic markets, but once the potential audience crosses global boundaries it becomes very
important to assess whether that style is appropriate.

• The source content to be translated.
• The context of the source content.
• The style in which the client writes for the language in question.
• Every translator should be able to translate linguistically correct translations but for many types of content, especially in areas where strong brand identity is important, understanding how the message should be delivered becomes as important as an accurate translation. It is creating this balance that makes the difference between a good and a great translator.
• Taking this one stage further – each language has peculiarities of construction and grammar that are linked to the culture of that country that also evolve and mutate with time and usage.
• Languages are a living thing, but as such they need to be “harnessed” and their users, in this case the translators, need to be given clear parameters to be able to produce quality results that clients expect from them.

Translating in French

French is a United Nations working language and used extensively in international dealing.
Economic or Political. Here are some hilarious and sometimes dangerous blunders arising as a
result of bad French Translation.

Swedish BP Chairman Offends “Small People”

BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg is Swedish. Whenever a speaker delivers a speech in
his or her non-native language – or even in his or her native language but in a different

country – the speech should be checked by someone in the target country to be certain
it is culturally appropriate. Svanberg apparently failed to perform such a check before he
said, “We care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies,
or greedy companies, don’t care. But that is not case in BP, we care about the small people.”
Unfortunately, the words “small people” did not convey the intended message. Because of this
poor choice of words, BP came across not as caring, but as arrogant, condescending, and even
uncaring.

International incident in Sudan almost sparked by mistranslation

A United Nations official angered Sudanese officials when a mistranslation quoted him as saying
he would work to prevent a possible secession. The real quote was that he would work hard to
avoid “any negative consequences” coming from a possible secession.

Kazakh president wants to “Pass Gas”

The online periodical Kazakhstan Today was unable to convey its intended meaning through
a machine-translated English article without producing a few chuckles. The article discussed
how Kazakhstan’s former president felt the country was not “passing gas” the way it should.
While intending to report national news on energy, this short, two-paragraph article made
four separate references to the important issue of “passing gas.” Months later, the periodical
altered the translation and removed the offending phrase.

German defamation lawsuit based on “Delinquent” French translation

A defamation lawsuit was filed after one party was mistranslated as calling the other “criminal,”
when the correct translation would have been “delinquent.” Fortunately, the error was realized
and the matter was resolved before too much damage was done.

2010 FIFA World Cup French translation bloopers

The 2010 FIFA World Cup was a challenging job for both translators and interpreters. The
frequent use of slang and idioms made for quite a challenge, and several translation blunders
were documented here. These included providing interpretation for the wrong language and
allegedly changing an innocent question into a question about a coach’s sexuality.

Some other hilarious French fails

• Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means “big breasts”. In this case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable effect on sales.1
• Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.1
• Restaurant menus are notorious for bad translation: Excerpt from an email I received from Stephen and Max Furnell,

FurnellS@dial.pipex.com:

• We saw a menu translation in a restaurant near Calais where “Pate de maison” was in the English version as “Our pie”. ["paté de maison" may be better translated as "house paté", or "house special" - i'm not sure how idiomatic it is. -ojo]
• In a Paris hotel elevator: Please leave your values at the front desk.
• Outside a Paris dress shop: Dresses for street walking.
• In a Bed & Breakfast in France: The genuine antics in your room come from our family castle. Long life to it.
• In a Bed & Breakfast in France: Please avoid coca watering, cream cleaning, wet towels wrapping, and ironing drying.

Hilarious though these may seem, they cause irrevocable damage to the parties concerned. In business such damage is not acceptable. This is why professional French translation services such as New Frontier Digital must be used so that your business does not end up in the humour column.

Translation services form part and parcel of a bustling niche market in the world of e-commerce
and international communications. Oftentimes the message that is being promoted is
misinterpreted by the recipient. This presents a myriad of challenges for both the sender and the
receiver. Foremost among a translator’s tasks is the accurate processing of information from
one language to another.

In this vein it is imperative that not only the words, phrases, idioms, parables and essence
are understood correctly, but also their context. Indeed it is entirely possible that the correct
meaning is totally mistaken by dint of nothing else other than the context. Context is best
defined as the set of circumstances and facts related to a particular event or predicament. With
regards to translation services, context must be related to the written word and the type of
translation service being requested.

How to Provide the Context to your Translator?

For every piece of prose which is need of translation, a specific context is required. For the
purposes of correct translation, it is imperative that the needs of the issuing authority be met
in every conceivable way. That’s why an e-commerce website detailing how best to go about
purchasing a product or service is understood on the receiving end to mean the same thing as
on the sending end. It would be an absolute travesty if the words were mistaken and somehow
lost all meaning in translation. Simple examples best illustrate the importance of context within
the same language (note that the problem is exponentially compounded when incorrectly
understood contextual errors are translated): Homonyms such as no and know, their and there,
to and too, here and hear, neigh and nay create complications for content creators. Should
these incorrectly compiled concepts be translated, the entire message will have been lost.

Problems Associated with Contextual Errors in Translation

The problem with taking a piece of text from a website and inserting it into Google Translate
or any other free text translation service is that words are translated but their meaning will
be irretrievably lost. Users thus run the risk of relaying incorrect information. This is not
only detrimental to a productive business model, or presentation or research effort, but it
delegitimizes the entire effort. If the meaning of the data is lost, the message is lost and sales/
revenue or reach will be hamstrung. The goal therefore is to clearly understand what it is that
the sender intends for the receiver to understand.

Enter the Translator

Then it is the job of the translator to put the sender’s message into context and to provide
a clear and concise translation with the right message. This is a professional service
and one which should be taken seriously. Issues which can emerge include: inadequate
contextual analysis, interference, lack of textual coherence, false calques, transcoding and
hypertranslation. There are also multiple other errors to guard against and these include
ambiguity, syntax errors, repetition of words, phrases and ideas, cumbersome construction
of content and inappropriate content. Together, these issues create a systematic check and
control mechanism against which a professional translation service can manage projects and
ensure that senders and receivers are indeed on the same page.

1. CONDENSE AND CLARIFY

Many businesses ignore the value of pre-editing materials for translation, but this step can
reduce costs by 25% and more while ensuring a higher-quality final product. How? By reducing
sentences such as “The objective of this chapter is to explain the use of macros in word
processing software.” to “Chapter Objective: Explain word processing macros.” It’s easy to see
how this saves money, cutting 11 words down to 6 for a cost reduction of almost 50%, but it’s
also important to see how this makes the sentence clearer, easier to translate, and easier for
the end user to understand. Consider hiring a translator or specialized translation editor to
eliminate redundancies, standardize style, or even vet entire sections that aren’t relevant to the
target reader.

2. BANISH JARGON

Many translators comment that industry-specific jargon is one of the biggest barriers to
producing a quality translation. Particularly when no glossary is provided. What’s more, we use our own jargon so much that we don’t even recognize it as such. To a translator, “I’ll deliver the target” connotes the transfer of a

translated file, while to a hunting goods supplier, it means something very different. A Google
search for “industry jargon” reveals 307,000 sites, many of them dedicated to jargon-busting,
and full of examples of how jargon leads us astray. When I first encountered the term “belly
lift” on an aeronautics jargon site, I thought “yoga posture or plastic surgery procedure?” while
the correct definition is the cargo capacity of a passenger airliner. To ensure a quality end
product, ask an industry “outsider” to review your documents for problematic jargon.

3. SCREEN FOR SPORTS TERMS

Americans in particular have a fondness for using terms and examples from sports, often
our “homegrown” sports like football and baseball. However to most of the rest of the world,
superlatives like home run, pinch hit, touchdown, Hail Mary pass, or bottom of the ninth fall
flat. In addition, making use of sports-centric examples alienates the target audience and slows
translators down, resulting in delays and cost overruns. Recently I worked on a computer
manual translation where students in an HTML class were asked to create an ordered list of the

teams in the American League. This text, destined for Western Europe, required the translation
team to localize the exercise by asking students to alphabetize a list of Formula One drivers.
Better yet, screen these terms out of your text entirely.

4. ELIMINATE DUPLICATE TEXT

Many documents include redundant text, which, if not eliminated, results in paying for the
same translation twice, or even more. One of my recent projects included translating a
workbook, and the workbook’s answer key. The client simply noted the word count for each
document, not realizing that the entire text of the workbook was repeated in the answer key.
When I pointed this out, the client was happy to have saved several hundred dollars. While
every text contains some amount of necessary repetition, try to eliminate the unnecessary kind.
In cases where budgets are tight, consider referencing duplicate text, i.e. “see instructions on
pg. 42″ rather than having it re-translated.

5. MAKE A MULTILINGUAL GLOSSARY

Most businesses have specific terms that always need to be translated in the same way
throughout their literature, for example the name of a certain machine, process, department,
etc. While these terms often appear on a company’s multilingual website, “standardize the
terms with what’s on our site” is a tall order when the site runs into hundreds or thousands
of pages with terminology scattered throughout. Creating a multilingual glossary of crucial
terms avoids this problem; simply e-mail it to all of the translators on the project. This saves
the time needed to respond to translator e-mails when terminology is unclear, and results in a
standardized final product.

6. PROVIDE CONTEXT

Good translation depends on context, since words mean different things in different situations.
This is especially important in documents such as a spreadsheet of terms, where no context
is available. One of my regular clients is a software company doing market research abroad,
with the results coming to the translation team in spreadsheet form. The client always provides
the text of the survey questions so that translators know what the context of the responses is.
Recently I translated a survey where one of the responses was the word “Linus.” My immediate
thought was “like the Peanuts character?” However when I referenced the survey text and
saw that the question had to do with computer operating systems, I saw that this was a typo
of the “Linux” open source operating system. Providing context allows translators to be more
precise in their terminology. Consider providing either supporting documents, or a short
summary of what the text is used for.

7. GO METRIC

Whether used as a unit of measurement to give the dimensions of a product, or as a figure of
speech such as “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” realize that America is the

odd one out when it comes to metrics. Pre-convert all measurements, speeds, distances, etc.
into metric before sending the document to be translated.

8. COLLABORATE

Translation consumers can save time and money by paying attention to the human element of
the process along with the technical and linguistic sides. Benefit from your translation team’s
expertise by asking “What can we do to make this project a success?” rather than just sending
off the files and waiting for the result. Every agency and every translator can draw upon a
multitude of “do” and “don’t” examples from past clients, so take advantage of this advice and
use it to your benefit. Encourage translators to ask questions, and discuss how they should
be managed in order to get answers back quickly and accurately. One of my clients requests
that I type up questions and send them in batches (rather than one at a time) so that the
client can just paste in responses. This is fast, easy, and cheap. “Should euros be converted to
dollars?” “No,” etc. With pre-editing of documents for translation, these types of questions can
even be anticipated and answered in an advance instructions sheet for translators.

These tips will ensure that you get a quick and effective translation of your website to boost
your online presence and sale

Unanticipated presence of foreign language documents can throw a project budget and timeline for a challenging loop. You could be on budget and ahead of schedule when . . . BOOM! A load of unexpected language documents! Any English speaking team carefully prepared and managed for a specific volume of time will suddenly be unable to complete the task. What to do? Outsource further? Disregard those additional documents or renegotiate with the team?

The world is flatter now. Anecdotally, we encounter an even higher variety of foreign language documents today as we help our clients comply with their internal obligations.  Outsourcing document translation introduces an additional layer of complexity and without the proper mix of the right people, process management and technology, costs rise and deadlines slip.

Here are a few things to consider when facing foreign language document translation outsourcing.

PEOPLE

Much ink has been spilled over communication: legal and IT notoriously speak different languages and many litigants seem to speak different languages when negotiating issues. When you introduce German, Italian or Spanish documents into the mix, the “people” element can get downright unwieldy. Create a technical term glossary and give this to your new translators to work with, regardless of their qualification or experience.

Project Management: Ever tried to manage a team of French speaking attorneys as they review documents written in French? Answering their questions about how to categorize borderline documents and checking their work for quality presents challenges. On a project of any size, you need a project manager (or team leader) that speaks the language and understands your case. Legal, construction, medical, chemical even hospitality has complex lingo foreign to an outsider.

Human Translation v. Machine Translation: Human translation is more accurate; machine translation is cheaper. Machine translation is often called “gist translation” because it gives you the gist of a document. There is a time for each. Given cost and quality constraints the workflow model typically is:

1. Use a native speaking review team to categorize documents identified for review and get a certified human translation of the subset of documents that are most relevant;
2. Use machine translation to allow an English speaking review team to categorize documents and get a certified human translation of the subset of documents that are most relevant; or
3. Use a hybrid of these two methods based on triaging the larger document population by content, e.g. by custodian or document topic identified by clustering or other technology tools.

Remember, not all human translation or machine translation software is created equal; you often get what you pay for.

Custodians: Setting aside time zone issues and complex privacy protocols, interviewing a document custodian in a country on the other side of the world and collecting their relevant documents are tough tasks. The custodian may not speak your language, or worse, may misunderstand your request and point you to the wrong documents. Use a translator to facilitate the interview or have the interview questions translated. In projects involving a high volume of custodians, it may be more cost-effective to train a translator to perform the interviews.

Review Team: If you need 40 certified industry experienced translators on short notice to categorize Russian language documents in nearly any medium sized city in this country you will pay a very high rate – if you can even find them. Consider using technology to tier documents by importance and route the lower priority documents to a non-qualified by equally experienced review team.

Cost: Multilingual certified translators are often significantly more expensive than their English-speaking equivalents. This is another good reason to leverage a non-certified review team if it makes sense for your case.

PROCESS

Noodle through the impact foreign language documents will have on your current workflow and establish processes to mitigate this impact.

Workflow: Categorizing documents by language and routing them to the team identified to review documents in that language is harder than it sounds. Your Spanish language review team will need a seamless and automated method to route mischaracterized English documents to your English review team. Add a tag to the coding form for each language and automate the process of queuing documents for review by the correct team. Why bother, you ask, can’t the Spanish review team speak English too? Cost – remember, you are paying the Spanish team more so you want to have your English team handle as much as they can.

Communication Protocol: Whenever you have multiple teams working on a project there is a potential for communication breakdown. Establish clean lines of communication so each review team is getting the same information and categorizing documents consistently. Since information needs to flow in both directions, identify the person on the litigation team that should be notified when one of the teams locates a “hot” document. Also specify how that notification should occur.

Document Production: Producing foreign language documents may be more expensive and time consuming than their English language equivalents. The cost and time required to translate an entire document production can be considerable. Some government agencies require documents produced in response to a government investigation be produced in English or with an accompanying translation. Discuss production language in your 26(f) conference and incorporate that decision into your protocol.

TECHNOLOGY

Once you have the right people and process, you still need technology that can handle your workflow.

Review Tool Functionality: In addition to the native documents and corresponding text loaded at the outset of the project, you may also want to load a machine translation version and/or a human translation version. If you add an image (for drawing redactions) and a production image for deposition and trial preparation, you will have four or five versions of a document in your database. How will your review tool group these versions? How much will it cost to host these additional versions?

Global Delivery Platform: If you have trouble staffing a review due to the lack of experts in your area that speak a specific language, then you need to take the work to outside experts. To take your work to a different city or country you will need access the office space, computers, keyboards, sufficient bandwidth to support a review team and building access restrictions to avoid a data security breach.

Search Functionality: Clearly the English language search term list you negotiated during the 26(f) conference will not retrieve documents in other languages. There are technologies that will translate your search terms to other languages, but these tools typically depend on strict word translations and may not account for cultural differences in word usage. Ask the custodians that created the foreign language documents what terms they would use to identify the relevant documents. Work with opposing counsel to develop a list of search terms that make sense.

Language Identification: When using technology to group documents by language, it is not uncommon for 20 percent of the documents to be mischaracterized. Mischaracterization typically occurs because the machine picked up on a name, address or phrase in an English document that it identifies as non-English, e.g. Carlos Rodriquez or custodians who use non-English phrases in their e-mail signature block (“C’est la vie”).

Foreign language documents will add time and cost to any project lifecycle. You can mitigate these side effects by marshaling the right people, process and technology. Using a professional translation company like New Frontier Digital will have you managing your document translation requirements in a multilingual world the right way. Contact us on getting your excess documents translated quickly and accurately by our team.

Businesses all over the world have been going online and using the internet for their businesses. The internet is now being considered as a very crucial part of any business.  This is because it helps them generate bigger revenues, provides a good platform to publicize their products, and is the easiest way of communicating with customers and potential customers.  Various techniques in SEO have been used to help generate traffic to the business’s sites and to come up with potential leads. However, it should not stop there.

Every business dreams of one day dominating the global market. You should not limit yourself by applying your marketing strategies behind national borders. A lot of countries all over the world are slowly developing and are now using the internet as well. This fact presents an obvious opportunity to attract more and more leads to your website to convert into profit. However the majority of the world’s web users does not speak or read English.  This is where we need to apply advanced techniques to penetrate the global market.  This is where website translation services come in.

But what are website translation services, and why do we need it? Throughout this article, we will be discussing the various aspects of website translation services and how we could benefit from them. This article should help you become aware of the positive effects of getting these services so you can try it out for yourself and get a shot at penetrating the global market.

What is it?

People might think that it’s as easy as translating the website to a different language word for word. Unfortunately, it doesn’t just work that way. It’s very important to get your message across and it’s not really going to work if you just translate the words to a different language. You need to put in to consideration that a phrase in the English language translated word for word in another language might not really make sense. Using language translation programs might work for short sentences, but it would be impossible to get your message across if you try to translate your website’s whole content on to it. It’s not just plain language translation; it deals even more on localization. This is why there are professionals who offer website translation services.

In website translation services, professionals would work hard in translating and localizing your webpage to the language that you choose. Localization of your web content ensures that the message the original English content is trying to get across is being received as it is in a different language. This opens up more opportunity for your business as it gives your websites global traffic.  You not only have your local traffic as a pool for your conversion, you also have the whole world with it.

Why you need it?

Just as your local website needs Search Engine Optimization or SEO to help it get more hits and more traffic, you need to do this in a global setting as well. What you did to optimize your site in the English language should be done in other languages that you are targeting. This would be the best way for you to penetrate the global market and earn more profit. This is where website translation services come in handy. By accurately translating and localizing the keywords and the whole site content, you get to ensure that you are attracting the right audience to go look at your website.

Website translation services offer multilingual SEO as part of their service to ensure that your website is optimized and to get more traffic from different countries. This increases the pool in which you get your conversions from.

Benefits you can get

Website translation can be a pain if you do it yourself. It’s best to get a professional to ensure that your site is being optimized the right way. Using a language translation program is out of the question because as what was said; it won’t really get you a comprehensible translation of your content. If you are planning to penetrate the global market, you need to make sure that you can get your message through the language that they speak and understand.  If the people going to your website don’t read English, they won’t understand what your website offers. You need to ensure that your target markets fall on the right website that they can read and understand.

Getting website translation services can help you get that problem out of the way. The people offering website translation services will do all the translation and localization of your website and content for you. The only thing left for you to do is to upload it.

Some of those who offer website translation services also help you manage and maintain the translated and localized sites to ensure that everything goes smoothly as well.

Website translation is not as easy as you may think it is. There are a lot of factors to consider that might make or break your website. If you are planning on moving to the global market and expanding your profit, consider investing on a good website translation service to help you earn more profit in the global market.

The importance of proper keyword research goes beyond simple guessing and testing. It can be a complex task that encompasses a methodical process, that once completed, can set the foundation for ongoing International Search Engine Optimization.

ONE-Find the right words and the correct scope!

If you are to toptimise your website for French seo, the first step is to identify equivalent French search terms. This might not give you the same number of search terms. For instance, if you start with the 10 search terms around the word “socks” (buy socks, buy socks online, glow-in-the-dark socks, etc.), you will most likely end up with twice as many search terms in French, as there are two common words for socks in French (”bas” and “chaussettes”). This might mean that you need to create additional landing pages for French search engine surfers.

Note: be wary of using official translations for keyword research. Your translator probably used the very best vocabulary and grammar possible, including words and conjugations that your target market might never even have heard of, let alone be searching for.

Know the search keywords and phrases used in search engines. Get found for keywords related to your website. Analyze your competition, check your website position in search engines, grow your keyword lists and optimize pages for keyword density and prominence. Research keywords to have your websites rank better in organic and paid search results. Without this first step, your website and keyword marketing campaigns are disadvantaged from the start. Keyword research can help you find keywords with high traffic and weak competition.

• Track and position check website ranking for search keywords in search engines.
  Analyze keyword competition. Website backlinks, keyword density, pagerank etc.
• Use multiple online keyword suggestion tools to provide new keywords to research. Combine lists of keywords to generate new keyword lists.
• Analyze keyword density of pages. Adjust keyword importance for titles, headers, text etc.

TWO-Know your targeting purpose!

It’s important to define the language in which the keyword research will be conducted and its targeting purpose. By targeting purpose I mean whether the language to be used will be universal or localized.

1. Universal version, also known as international version, is more suitable for internationalization purposes. A good example will be to target the entire Spanish speaking world – 22 different countries and islands- with a common language that will be understood and accepted by the majority rather than using Mexican Spanish, Spanish from Spain, or Peruvian Spanish.Use of colloquialisms, idiomatic expressions or any connotation that will imply adaptation to a local, regional or a specific ethnic sub-group should be avoided.

An example of a good universal keyword in Spanish is the term “Buscadores,” which means Search Engines. Instead, if chosen “Motores de Busqueda,”, which also means Search Engines, it will more likely be understood only by Latin American folks.

1. Localized version is important if what you want is to deliver a targeted message to customers of a specific country such as Spain. For this purpose, you should include idioms, cultural aspects and idiosyncrasies of that particular group. A Regionalized version will also apply to geographical areas such as Latin America. Even though there are differences in terminology and applicability among Latino countries, they are more homogeneous when compared to European Spanish.A good example of a localized version for the Spanish term “shopping cart” for visitors from Spain is “Cesta de compras”. The regionalized version for Latin American visitors is “Carrito de compras”.

THREE-Find the right people!

Once you are clear about the coverage of your target language, then you need to find the right human talent to help you with the research. A company such as New Frontier Digital will ensure you get the best optimisation.

No machine can replace humans. So, if you are thinking about using online dictionaries, encyclopedias and keyword research tools such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Compete, Quantcast, Hitwise, Google Keyword Tools and others; with no human intervention, then you are risking your entire project. Human intervention is needed in multilingual keyword research because of sociological, contextual and intrinsic aspects of the language.

While a machine can give you a list of useful keywords for a seed list; the knowledge, meaning and understanding of the context in which each keyword applies is what really matters. For example, the Spanish keyword “Posicionamiento” (Positioning in English) can be understood in Marketing as the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization. Contrarily, this same Spanish keyword can be understood in Internet Marketing as Search Engine Optimization.

I would like to emphasize the fact that it is important to work with native speakers that preferably have experience in the field of research and are familiar with the geographical area for which you are localizing your website. For instance, if you ask me to do keyword research in Spanish, English and perhaps French, I am sure I can deliver results. But if you ask me to conduct research in Russian for terms related to Search Engine Optimization (Поисковая оптимизация сайта), I will be completely lost simply because I don’t speak the language and don’t understand Cyrillic.

Likewise, there are many translators that are familiar with basic legal terminology, but lack deep understanding of the context in which the terms apply. Some even confuse the term “bonds trader” with “bondsman”. The former refers to terminology used in the financial industry to describe someone that trades bonds in the cash market, while the later is strictly used in the U.S. criminal justice to refer to the person that pays the bond on your behave for a fee.

FOUR-Use the right tools for your keyword research

This is a challenging issue in the current state of the keyword research industry. There aren’t many keyword research tools that will allow you to conduct research in multiple languages. In fact, most of them are not even UTF-8 ready, which is the system that represents any character in the Unicode standard. And if you are not familiar with Unicode, you can learn more by visiting the Unicode Consortium page.

Now, image for a second you are conducting keyword research in Simplified Chinese to position your site in Baidu, the Chinese based Search Engine. If the tool you are using is not UTF-8, that means that all you may see is gibberish instead of a proper Simplified Chinese term.

This gets more complicated if you are using generic tools to try to find search volume estimates for a specific keyword in a specific country. And it gets even harder if you are dealing with low search volume keywords.

Google Trends is a clear reflection of this situation. You can find results for high volume searches, even for specific countries, but not so easily for low search volume keywords. Try the following keywords and keyphrases in Google Trends and see what happens:

• Поисковая оптимизация сайта
• Motores de Busqueda
• Buscadores
• Palabras Claves
• Bonds Trader

There are some tools like Keyword Discovery that offer information from specific countries for localization purposes. This tool seems to provide relevant estimates for high search volume, but can be off for low search volume keywords. In my personal experience I even found inaccurate results when conducting research for niche terms in Spanish. And the localized Spanish Database Center was a bit off when compared to other localized data.

In conclusion, start your multilingual keyword research by defining your language goals, and decide whether you will be using universal, regional or localized versions. Don’t forget to hire translators that preferably have experience in your niche or products and know the market for which you are localizing. Find the best tools for your needs and make sure they all work by literally seeing the results in your target language. And if you are using Google Keyword Tool or Traffic Estimator install the target language packs for your operating system.

Relying on online translation tools can be a risky business, especially if you expect too much from them. For the time being, translation is best left to experienced translators. Here’s why;

In 2003 the small German town of Homberg-an-der-Efze, north of Frankfurt, had to pulp an entire print run of its English-language tourism brochure – after officials used an internet translating tool to translate the German text.

According to one report, the brochure was “rendered meaningless” by the online tool. Tourists were promised “casual value”, the literal translation of the German word for “leisure potential”, at venues such as the “free bath” – better known as an “open-air swimming pool”.

Martin Wagner, mayor of Homberg-an-der-Efze, admits that the town made a “blunder”. As a result of officials trying to save money by getting the internet to do a translator’s job, a total of 7500 brochures had to be binned.

This story highlights some of the pitfalls of translating online. Even today, such disaster stories exist for businesses that tried to short-cut their international communications. There are many instant translation tools on the web – but they are best used for individual words and short phrases, rather than for brochures, books or anything complex, that should always be reviewed by an industry experienced translator.

Confused

For example, one of the joys of the web is that it grants you access to an array of foreign news sources. Yet if you were to use a translation tool to try to make sense of such reports, you end up with a rather skewed and surreal view of the world.

A report in the French daily Le Monde dealt with Tony Blair’s determination to remain as British prime minister, despite the post-Iraq and Hutton controversies. When the French text was run through an online instant translation service, it ended up more confusing than convincing.

“With listening to it”, Le Monde reportedly reported, “in the event of victory Tony Blair intends to remain with the capacity until the term of the legislature….” The German newspaper Die Zeit recently ran a piece on America’s efforts to sell the “Roadmap to Peace” to Israelis and Palestinians.

According to another translation tool, Die Zeit’s report said: “The US-government makes bent previously a large around Israel and the occupied zones, although both Powell and Rumsfeld in that sewed East delayed have itself.” That sounds more like Double Dutch than English.

‘Deprived visit!’

ABC, one of Spain’s leading newspapers, reported on Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar’s meeting with Tony Blair at Chequers. The text of the report, when put through the works, reveals that:
“The official description of the encounter is ‘deprived visit’, but Spanish governmental sources confirmed that the main boarded subjects were the process of European integration and, like no, the every day more delicate situation in Iraq and Near East.”

Why the mistakes?

Why is foreign text “rendered meaningless” in this way, when passed through an online translation tool? According to Sabine Reul, who runs the Frankfurt-based translation company Textburo Reul, translation tools have limited uses – and problems arise when web users expect too much from them. “A translation tool works for some things,” says Reul. “Say a British company wants to order a box of screws from a German supplier. A sentence like ‘We need one box of a certain type of screw’ is something that a machine could translate reasonably accurately – though primitively.”

Yet when it comes to translating blocks of text – words and sentences that convey thoughts and sentiments – online tools are bound to fail, she adds. “Beyond simple sentences, the online process simply doesn’t work because machines don’t understand grammar and semantics, never mind idiom and style.”

“Language is not a system of signs in the mechanical sense of the word”, says Reul. “It is a living medium that is used to convey thought. And that is where machines fail. Human input is indispensable as long as computers cannot think.”

Reul and other translators look forward to the day when clever computers might help to ease their workload – but that time has not arrived yet.

“It would be nice if computers could do the job. And certainly the quest for machine translation has prompted a lot of linguistic research that may prove valuable in unforeseen ways. But experience to date confirms that even the most subtle computer program doesn’t think – and you need to be able to think in order to translate.”

Online translation; simply don’t do it with important business documents. Leave it to the professionals.

Until the dawn of ‘human intelligence’ computers, online translation tools are best reserved for words, basic sentences and useful holiday phrases. For tourism brochures, newspaper reports and the rest, you will have to rely on old-fashioned “experienced translator’ such as the services we provide at New Frontier Digital. We know translation, give us a call or email today.