Does Your Business have an International Presence?
The Internet makes having a worldwide presence make sense for many businesses. Many companies, including small “mom and pop” stores, can easily begin offering their products around the world through an effective Website.
However, this brings up many common issues and concerns. For example:
- Can my website be effective if it’s just in English?
- Does my website need to be translated into multiple languages?
- How do I accept payments in different currencies?
- How do I take care of international taxes and laws?
- What about international shipping?
What Website Translation Services are Available?
It really comes down to 2 options:
- Computer Translation Tools – There are free and low cost tools available that allow you to add some scripts to your Website code and it automatically translates your Website into the language of choice for your site visitor.
- Human Translation – With this option, every word on your site needs to be read and reviewed by a human translator. After the translator is done making the changes, duplicate pages of your entire site need to be added to your Web hosting company account, and the navigation needs to be altered to allow people to navigate to those pages as needed.
Which Website Translation Service Should I Choose?
Computer translation makes Website translation extremely quick and easy. You can have your site available in multiple languages within a day. However, the big problem with this option is that often words get mistranlsated.
Recently, we had a client who was considering an automatic translation service. They had a sentence which should have read “Your computer server needs to accomplish this for your company.” Unfortunately, the automatic website translation service translated the sentence to read “Your computer waiter needs to accomplish this for your company.”
While our client found this mistranslation to be funny and entertaining, the client quickly realized that they needed a higher level of professionalism than the automatic translation tool could provide.
Does Sebo Provide Website Translation Services?
We do not employ in-house translators. However, we have connections with several firms that provide human translation services. In addition, we have created tools that facilitate the translation process. Our estimates suggest that our tool speeds up the website translation process (and therefore lowers the cost!) by at least 50%. We would love to discuss if website translation services would be right for your business.