Top 8 Languages To Target For Website Localisation

The way in which we communicate online is changing. Not only is it internet the first port of call for people seeking information but it is no longer dominated by English speakers. Both transformations spell good news for those with an eye for international markets.

In the good old days when we looked for a company, a supplier, a shop or a product the Yellow Pages or our high street would have more than likely been the only way of getting results. Those within a certain sector or industry would have had personal contacts or trade groups that could have pointed them in the right direction. Today most people turn to search engines such as Google or Yahoo!, at least for some initial fact finding and if a website has done a good job and providing this information, a purchasing decision is made. But how do you stand out in the face of local competition? For example, if you want to buy in thousands of car flags for Euro 2008, simply punch in “England car flags supplier” are you are met with 904,000 results, that’s a lot of competing pages.

English speakers are dwarfed

Add to this the fact that people using the internet are no longer domestic, i.e. English speakers, and the potential of the internet for a company becomes massive. The growth and development of international trade and commerce now means people are seeking products, affiliations and clients from the four corners of the earth. Just as exporters in the UK may be seeking distributors in China, businesses in India may be seeking an exporter and partners in the UK. The key to success is being found.

What to do.

To be found, one needs to have a multilingual internet presence. The internet is simply no longer the preserve of English speakers. Major languages such as French, Arabic, Chinese and Spanish are now all contributing to the overall percentage of internet users. As more and more countries develop their internet infrastructures and more and more people can afford a PC, the number of internet users in foreign countries will increase at dramatic rates. Languages such as French and Spanish have been spread to Africa and Latin America by their colonial owners. Arabic is the language of the Arabs and Islam and is therefore read from Morocco to Malaysia. China now boasts and internet savvy population of 123 million, less than 10% of the population. Within 10 years the majority of internet users will not be native English speakers. A foreign language website is therefore crucial for those companies wanting to capitalise upon this vast and ever-growing foreign audience.

The benefits.

A foreign language or multilingual website offers forward looking companies with three main benefits.

1) You reach a new audience: Research shows that people prefer information in their own language, want information in their own language and are more likely to buy something if presented to them in their own language. By communicating to them through your website you tap a huge market and increase your reach.
2) You build credibility: If your company only has a site in English and your competitor in all major languages, which one will gain more credibility? Translation of your website demonstrates that you are a truly international player. In addition, it shows you understand, value, and have respect for that particular country or region.
3) You increase revenue: Billions of dollars, pounds and euros in potential revenue are lost each year due to lack of investment in website translation. Most internet users will naturally feel more comfortable and understand a company better if their information, products or services are presented in their native language.

So this all sounds rather easy doesn’t it? Simply run the site content’s through a free translation tool, whack it up using the same template as the English site and away we go. Unfortunately not. In fact if you did that you may very well lose business.

As with anything that crosses linguistic, national and cultural barriers things get ‘lost in translation’ and the website is no different. Many sites can get away with a simple translation, however many can’t. Why? Because their English website would be unsuitable for the target market. As a result many in the industry have moved away from the term “website translation” to “website localisation”.

Website localization is the process of modifying an existing website to make it accessible, usable and culturally suitable to a new target audience. It is a multi-layered process needing both programming expertise and linguistic/cultural knowledge. If either is missing, the chances are that a localization project will encounter problems.

In the majority of cases it is the lack of linguistic and cultural input that lets a website localization project down. In order to give an insight into the impact culture and language has on website localization the following three areas shall be examined.

The top languages to localise your website.

The top internet languages are;

1.    English

2.    Chinese

3.    Russian

4.    Spanish

5.    Arabic

6.    Japanese

7.    French

8.    German
 

 

English

A 2002 survey of 2,024 million Web pages determined that by far the most Web content was in English: 56.4%. A more recent study, which used Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web, determined that there were over 11.5 billion Web pages in the publicly indexable Web as of the end of January 2005. As of March 2009^[update], the indexable web contains at least 25.21 billion pages. On July 25, 2008, Google software engineers announced that Google Search had discovered one trillion unique URLs. As of May 2009^[update], over 109.5 million websites operated. Of these 74% were commercial or other sites operating in the .com generic top-level domain and were english. What these statistics show is that English is still the most important language in the web as it is universal.

Chinese

The Chinese population makes up 23% of the world population. It means that more than 2 billion people are speaking Mandarin. Since China is a very promising country for its economy power and Mandarin is an official language of the United Nations, a Mandarin speaking skill is surely a must-have in the future. Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, youll get a lot of users logged on to your website that speak only Chinese, this gives you access to nearly 1/5th of the worlds population, which includes people from China as well as other countries with a large number of Chinese population or the ones that speak Chinese.

You might not even need to advertise yourself as with your Chinese website translation you might show up on search engines like Baidu that are based in Chinese. A great benefit when such a thing happens is that youll automatically get access to the huge number of people who access this search engine for any relevant search that they want to carry out. Also you can make sure that the translation company has relevant keywords in Chinese included in the content so that you can have a translated website that is also SEO friendly. In this way just a translation service will also become a great marketing advent for you.

Once you have a website translated in Chinese you open up several markets for yourself in south east Asia. China is surely one market that opens up however alongside you will also be able to step in Hong Kong, Singapore and other neighboring small countries that have a decent amount of Chinese speaking population. The best part is that you do not have to spend money on individual nations to get local attention but a mere Chinese website translation can help you with all the above.

A key benefit is that you can get this service at quite an affordable rate. Most of the providers charge you per page or per 100 words. In this way you can decide the amount that you want to spend on such a service and as per that you can have a section of the website or the entire website translated in Chinese.

To be able to avail all the above mentioned benefits you have to hire a professional Chinese website translation service so that you can get what you deserve. Most of the free Chinese translation software are only good for individual users because they do not provide SEO friendly or professional content, they just translate stuff word by word and at times the sentences do not make any sense either. Make sure you have the best assistance so that you can get the best results. This you will get from New Frontier Digital!
 

Russian

 

Russian is the 8th largest language in the world and 6th in terms of speakers and the Russians have become very internet savvy people since the last decade. Moscow is the most expensive city in the world and has the most billionaires in the world, thanks to Russian oil and other factors. So even though development is uneven most Russian have a computer and the Russians are all over Europe buying Europe up. These people are not highly English literate as they love their language. Therefore translating your website into Russian will enable you to tap into this gold mine of internet users.

 

Spanish

Hispanics are becoming increasingly affluent: 64% percent are now firmly within the nation’s middle class and more than half are buying their first homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Hispanics are entering cyberspace at high speed with over 14 million U.S. Hispanics online. Yet the companies successfully targeting Hispanics online in the direct response arena are few and far between.

A marketplace of this size and yet marketers are failing to capitalize. One of the biggest errors is that many are taking a one-size-fits-all approach to the Spanish language. There are many different variations of the Spanish language and you must first consider to whom you are marketing.

Efforts to tap into the Hispanic market shouldn’t end with translating marketing materials. The cultural piece of marketing is always what people miss to capture that market, you’re not just translating. You need to put some effort into learning the culture.

Therefore it is clear that proper translation into the spanish language which is increasing in popularity in Europe as well as the whole world will give no end of benefits to your website!

Arabic

Arabic is spoken in more than 20 countries, from Morocco to Egypt and throughout the Arabian Peninsula. It is the first language of over 186 million people, and at least another 35 million speak Arabic as a second language. As the language of Qur’ān, the holy book of Islam, it is thought as a first language in Muslim states throughout the world.

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the official language throughout the Arab world, and in its written form it is relatively consistent across national boundaries. Of all the spoken dialects, Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood, due primarily to Egypt‘s role as the major producer of movies and TV programs in the Arab world.

The Arab world is increasingly using the internet and these customers are the wealthiest in the word thanks to the Arabic oil industry. Therefore having an Arabic website to interest them will mean much more profit for anyone in the world.

 

Japanese

79.48 millions of Japanese use Internet and the Internet penetration rate in Japan is currently 62.3%.  This is an increase of 32 million of users and 25.2% penetration rate since Japan‘s last survey in 2000.  The survey also confirms that by the end of 2004, 62% of Japanese used broadband technology; 20.4% used dial-up system; and 18.4% used the ISDN system.  

 

Japanese search for information in the following level of preference, internet, TV, magazine/books, and newspapers according.  The impact of internet in people’s life in Japan is great.  Japanese reported that the use of Internet decreased their time for reading books/ magazines, sleeping, watching TV, and personally seeing family members.  Yet, internet and phone communication with family members increased by the use of these new technologies.  Japanese said they now gather more information on the Internet and buy less books, magazines, video games, and music CDs.      

 

Online shopping is the most used communication tool in Japan with an increase of 89.1% in online shopping from PCs and 18.1% from mobiles.  The surveys also report that Japanese are very satisfied with their online shopping experience (74.6%). 

The figures are clear. Japan is the most tech savvy country in the world and also the most technologically advanced! The Japanese will like a website translated into their native language than one in English. Therefore Japanese is a top choice for website translation and localisation.

French

FRENCH people spend more time online than those in other European countries, a recent study has found.

The study by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) showed that on average French internet users spent 13 hours a week online. But nearly one-in-three said they spend more than 16 hours a week using the internet.

This compares with people in the UK and Spain who spend around 11 hours a week online, and an overall European average of 10 hours 15 minutes.

What is striking about this study is how quickly consumers are becoming such sophisticated internet users. This shows that if you offer content and services, the demand will be there from the French. This and the added fact that many people around the world use French as a second language is added reason to translate into French!

German

According to data by Initiative D21Berlin-based organization that promotes Internet usage and access, close to 70 percent of Germans now use the Internet, an increase of four percent from the previous year of 2009. This includes data gained from nearly 31,000 telephone interviews concludes that men are considerably more likely to be online than women. 76.1 percent of men use the Internet, while the figure is 62.4 percent for women.

It comes as no surprise to see that the figures reveal declining Internet use with increasing age. 94.5 percent of 14-29 year olds use the Internet, while 85 percent of 30-49 year old go online; that figure sinks to 44.9 percent for the 50-plus age category.

The top federal state in terms of Internet usage is Bremen, which improved upon its previous year’s placing, by leaping to the top of the standings from seventh place. 74.2 percent of people use the Internet there. They are followed by the federal state of Berlin which boasts 73.3 percent Internet usage. Baden-Württemberg comes in third at 72.6 percent.

The Germans are increasingly using the internet to gain products and services and they do not believe in websites that are offering services only in English. A German translated and localised website will boost their confidence and will get you more profits from Europe since many small countries use German as a native language.

These are the top 8 languages used by the globalising internet community and localizing your webpage accordingly will provide many banefits!.