Website translation? What options are available?

Do you want to have a website or online store translated? From machine translation to a traditional translation agency: the method you choose determines not only the quality, but also the turnaround time and the final cost of your website translation. In this overview, we list all the options along with their pros and cons.

There are plenty of reasons to translate a website. For a business, it’s the first step toward tapping into a new target market—whether domestically or across borders. It’s also an added service for your customers. This allows you to better engage your readers by connecting with them on a more personal level. As an organization—such as a municipality or hospital—this added service is also extremely valuable for people who are not yet fluent in the local language. They’ll understand your message better without having to rely on interpreters.

Of course, translation is not the only step you need to take for localization. It is also important to adapt content and online capabilities to the social and cultural preferences of the target market.

We will show you how to translate your entire website or web shop in a few easy steps and discuss the different options, along with their advantages and disadvantages.

There are actually 3 options conceivable in our view:

1. Machine translation via a Google translate button (or similar tool)
2. Machine translation, including via Clonable
3. Human translation

1. Have website translated: Google translate button

You probably know Google Translate as an option for translating websites. You may have seen a Google Translate button on some websites or web shops that allows you to see a translated version of that same website or web shop.

You can also use this to translate your entire website into different languages in a few easy steps. This is how you add Google Translate to your site:

In your website, you can easily add a piece of code so that a button appears. Your web developer can easily take care of this for you.

Example:

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en-US">

<body>

<h1>My Web Page</h1>

<p>Hello everybody!</p>

<p>Translate this page:</p>

<div id="google_translate_element"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">

function googleTranslateElementInit() {

new google.translate.TranslateElement({pageLanguage: 'en'}, 'google_translate_element');

}

</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script>

<p>You can translate the content of this page by selecting a language in the select box.</p>

</body>

</html>

You can test it on W3schools.com

• Easy to add

• As good as free of charge

• The quality of translations is not always good.

• There is no possibility to adjust the quality. There is no editor of translations to generate better quality via human translators in the end.

• By using this button, your "translated" site is not findable in the search engines, and you cannot advertise it because you do not have a separate website url.

• Certain words and phrases remain untranslated because Google Translate only translates the actual text on a web page and does not take into account text contained in an image, for example. The same goes for Google Chrome's automatic Translate option.

2. Automatically translate a website using AI or a translation platform

In machine translation, also known as machine translation,the content of a page is realized from one language to another using artificial intelligence. Unlike human translation, machine translation does not take into account context or language nuances, which often leads to inaccurate translations.

There are plenty of plugins, modules, and similar tools you can add to your site that use automatic translation. However, the quality of the translation and/or ease of use and/or configuration time and/or website speed are often subpar.

• Costs are low compared to human translations

• New changes aren’t automatically included, which means you still need to run the ` plugin ` command to translate new sections. This is often overlooked, resulting in the site frequently missing a percentage of its translations.

• In many cases, an additional website must be set up or a resource- plugin must be installed, which means extra maintenance.

• plugins s often cause speed issues

• Configuring the plugins is often very complicated, especially when elements such as filters, meta tags, image alt tags, etc., need to be translated.

• The quality of the translations is sometimes better than Google Translate, but still not always as good.

• Often, certain words and phrases remain untranslated because the plugins cannot handle all the technical code.

The introduction of Clonable

Clonable offers a different way to translate your entire website without the problems associated with standard machine translations via plugins and similar sites. Clonable provides machine translations in over 25 languages that can be easily refined with the help of human translators. This allows you to combine the best of both worlds.

The TaaS (Translation as a Service) solution utilizes various translation services and selects the one that delivers the best results. In addition, Clonable offers other advantages. The Clonable platform provides a scalable way to automatically translate a website without the drawbacks of heavy plugins or static translation files. You combine fast machine translation with the flexibility to centrally edit texts and SEO metadata via a visual editor.

• Automatic and human translation combined

• Translate your entire website content in a few days. A demo is available within minutes if you contact us.

• New content or design changes in the original are immediately included / translated as well.

• Personalization is possible. From text to image, from script to css, it's all customizable in the cloned version.

• No difficult plugins

• Virtually all content management systems and website technologies are compatible

• SEO Optimization is possible. Meta tags and alt tags are also translated.

• Additional marketing opportunities: a simple method allows you to translate your product feeds, allowing you to quickly distribute ads with Google Shopping and other Ads.

• With this method, your website will be live within a few weeks, which is many times faster than a project with only human translations.

• The costs are up to 10 times lower than human translators.

• Maintenance is a no-brainer. Every change or content is taken into account immediately

• Personalization remains possible, and human translators can easily increase the quality of the machine translation.

• Faster marketing for webshops abroad through product feed translation option

• There is no possibility to adjust the quality. There is no editor of translations to generate better quality via human translators in the end.

• By using this button, your "translated" site is not findable in the search engines, and you cannot advertise it because you do not have a separate website url.

• Certain words and phrases remain untranslated because Google Translate only translates the actual text on a web page and does not take into account text contained in an image, for example. The same goes for Google Chrome's automatic Translate option.

3. Have website translated: human translation

Native speakers or professional human translators often offer the best quality. Translating a website then goes as follows:

1. Establish localization project manager: a localization project manager is often established. This person oversees the entire process and is responsible for implementing and executing a company or organization's localization strategy, managing the translation project from start to finish.

2. Website copy: the project manager engages the web developer or web agency to copy a website. Configuration, server and hosting capacity must be taken into account. Some SaaS solutions offer an automated solution that allows you to quickly build an additional frame for the translated version of your website for a fee.

3. The project manager, together with the other stakeholders, should decide which texts should or should not be translated. Sometimes there are so many texts that a choice is made as to which ones are most important and should be done first.

4. The translator or translation agency should be called in. If a lot of texts need to be translated, it should be taken into account that this may take quite some time. For a good translation the meta tags, alttags, filters, etc. should also be forwarded.

5. After the translations are ready, the documents must be entered into the CMS. In addition to entering the pages, this includes entering the metatitles, metadescriptions, alttags, filters, and so on.

6. The localization project manager should set up a maintenance workflow for new translations within the website. For example, for new blogs, products, etc.

• The main advantage of human translation is that it takes into account context, structure and language nuances. In addition, human translation usually includes procedures such as proofreading and quality assurance.

• Many content management systems allow for more personalization options than some machine translation options such as Clonable. If you have a website that is only half the same as the original, you cannot avoid choosing this method.

• Market launch time. Through this method, larger websites take months to sometimes even a year or longer to go live.

• Cost: this method involves huge costs. Not only with the translations themselves, but therefore also with the project manager, the web developer or any additional costs of the SaaS platform, the additional hosting.

• Maintenance issues. Changes to the original website are not immediately reflected. Which makes the number of hours and costs to be spent on maintenance for the additional website much higher than in the original. With each new blog article, product and page, the process of translation has to be repeated again. Sending article to translator and putting it back into the website after receiving it.

• Inaccuracies lurk. There is a huge risk of forgetting certain pieces. Often meta tags, new products, blogs, etc. are forgotten in terms of translation. This not only looks sloppy, but it also limits the potential of the website or web shop. In some websites, pages are even in the original language, and this greatly reduces the conversion potential.

Translating your website for different audiences is one way to expand into new markets and boost sales or offer additional services to your foreign-language target audience at home. A tool like Clonable allows you to copy, translate and maintain your entire website. And there are several options to apply personalizations and improve automatic translation quality with human translators.