Our current global economy, and worldwide internet penetration rates, encourage more businesses to expand into online foreign markets, target international customers, and explore new business arenas.
To do this successfully, translation and localisation of websites, social media posts, blogs, and so on, is a must. But, how do you successfully manage localisation costs? And, how can you ensure a good Return on Investment (ROI)?
The following guidelines have been produced to enable you to plan ahead for localisation, giving useful strategies for keeping costs down, and will assist you in realising a worthy ROI.
Localisation and Translation
Localisation is not just translation – it is far more than merely translating words into another language; it covers cultural, regional, and societal differences, and also, target audience preferences, needs and expectations. To successfully translate your online presence you will need to localise your content.
This can be a costly experience but, with foresight and strategic planning, there are ways to keep within budget:
• Translation costs are usually calculated by the number of words to be translated multiplied by the price charged by your localisation expert – fewer words means lower costs
• Keep content to a minimum by rewriting, editing, and using direct language on your translated site to minimise word counts
• Do you need to translate all your content and every page of the website? If not, consider just localising some elements of your site initially, especially if your budget is limited
• Consider which languages you require as some are more costly to translate than others – check with your translation service provider to find out what they charge for each language
• Plan content 2 or 3 months ahead of translation and release, so there is no delay in launch dates
• Where possible consider targeting specific languages that are used in numerous places. For example, Spanish is used in over twenty countries, and Arabic is used by over 4.2 billion people worldwide, so do your homework, and check which languages best serve your interests and future plans
• Be consistent with your use of language – Words, strings of words, and frequently used terms only need to be translated once so you can keep costs down through consistent terminology
Developing Localisation
Localising your business should be incorporated into potential global plans for your company from the outset to give you the best chance of success, and the possibility of remaining within budget.
Budgeting for localisation costs should ideally be completed alongside discussions with your selected professional localisation specialist. They can advise on issues such as, technical reviews (is your website, app, and so on, supported by software that can be adapted to new languages and locations?) glossaries (for future translation purposes), and localisation platforms (to streamline the localisation process).
Early discussions with your translation service provider would give you the opportunity to use Internationalisation (also known as i18n) which is the process used to ensure your website, apps, and products are ready to be localised.
Internationalisation reduces future costs involved with extensive localisation projects, as it can be applied to any language but, it can be costly, and time consuming initially.
Translation platforms are designed to give extensive functionality and offer a variety of benefits. Developers, translators, and marketers can access the translation workflow, which is stored in single place, at any time, utilising glossaries, style guides, and brand voice details to increase speed, depth, and reliability of localised documents and content.
Translation memory tools within these platforms ensure that frequently used terms, repeated words, or recurrent content are stored for future use, thus streamlining the translation process, cutting costs.
Your ROI will improve if you can minimise initial localisation costs through strategic advance planning. The information above gives you a basis for organising your localisation and translation needs, offering ways to save money, stick to budget, manage localisation essentials, and select requirements in advance of going global with your business.
Choosing a translation company to work with that offers professional localisation, skilled translators, translation technology that fulfils your requirements, and that can cope with any technical or specialist translation requests, is essential to a successful localisation process and ROI.
Remember, localisation is a long-term contract enabling you to globalise your business – investment may seem high initially, but return will be greater.
