Why Have a Multi Language Website

Why should you translate your website?

You’re running a website which targets the export market, ask yourself this question "are you addressing the needs of your target customer or just your local market?"  If you want to directly address non native speakers of your own language to learn about your product, you should offer them as much assistance as possible, by reading on their own language. Currently, less than 15% of all companies with a Web prescence offer more than one language, a majority of corporate sites offering only English.

More and more companies on the Web are realising that to reach the vast majority of population there is the need to encourage their site to offer more than one language.

The top 10 most spoken languages are:

• Chinese: 885,000,000
• English: 350,000,000
• Spanish: 250,000,000
• Hindi: 200,000,000
• Arabic: 150,000,000
• Bengali: 150,000,000
• Russian: 150,000,000
• Portuguese: 135,000,000
• Japanese: 120,000,000
• German: 100,000,000

How would translating a website help to promote business?

Trials have shown that multi-lingual websites will increasingly have a competitive advantage over their single language competitors. Using the web as a marketing tool is an important decision, customers who find your website need to comprehend the products and services you offer.

Only then will they be able to get in touch and send business enquiries to you.  Without the ability complete and submit a simple form your website is putting up barriers to prevent communication with new customers.

Should you use a human or machine to translate your website?

A professional translation of your website is key to your marketing success, for communicating with potential customers. Great leaps in improvement have been made in recent years in the field of Machine Translation.  Google’s own free tools allow an entire webpage to be translated into over 200 languages just by adding a few lines of HTML code.

However, the translations provided will never be as accurate as those produced by a native speaking human, leaving scope for potentially embarrassing miss-translations to take place.

For this reason we usually recommend websites use only human translated text and numerical data.

To learn how your website can be translated into other languages, get in touch today.  CIC have extensive experience of translating websites and online applications.