Website Translation Tip

A global audience will make purchasing decisions based largely on the quality of your website’s design and content. 

Be sure that your site includes content in the local language.  This will ensure that your site receives preference from Yahoo and Google’s search engines.

In addition, by translating your website you are making a good impression and the common courtesy of your target market and potential customer. 

Often times, sales are lost only by an inch…be sure that this isn’t the reason you are not getting business globally. 

Translation tips for desktop publishing translated documents

Often times when our customers look to translate their documents, they do not think how they are going to get the translated text into their English layout.  An English layout can look fabulous on paper but when desktop publishing of the translation happens it can cause many issues.

IteroText has lots of experience placing translated text into the original source layout, however, there are many things to think about.

1.  Foreign language translations expand when coming from English – typically 20% or more.  This means the English text fit perfectly, but now how do you fit 20% more text in that same layout?  Often times we can reset the document entirely or shrink the point size and the leading.  However, by shrinking translated text, the finished product looks crammed and your message may get lost in the crowd.

2.  Leave plenty of white space when you know your documents will be translated.  This way there will be room for the expanded translated text.  Narrow columns may not work with languages such as German as their words are much longer and hyphenation could be in appropriate.  How we hyphenate in English can be very different in other languages, as the rules vary.

By thinking ahead you can save yourself the pain of an awkward layout and crammed text. 

Translation Tip for reviewing your translated documents

It makes good business sense to have your internal international sales, distributors or business team to review and offer their feedback on your foreign language translations.  In-country reviewers can provide an additional step in your quality control process.  Please consider the following before implementing an internal translation review process.

I am assuming of course that you are going to be working with a professional and reputable translation agency or translator and that they have the foreign language skills, subject matter expertise and is completely capable to provide a professional translation.  These folks usually expect a few tweaks to their document and will include that in their pricing.  However, if there is a complete rewrite – they will charge significantly more.

The purpose of an in-country review is to verify your industry terminology and ensure that your company’s style is utilized and is consistent with your brand and messaging.  Some in-country reviewers think that when they are asked to look at a document that they must mark it up all over the place to show they did their job.  When in actuality these changes are merely language preferences.  You may want to discuss your expectations and timeline before handing over the document for review…discouraging excessive word choice and stylistic changes and stressing your due date. 

Keep in mind that you do not allow your local salespeople to review and completely rewrite your English documents.

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