This is an interview with a professional designer of multilingual websites and a translator. We discussed the best ways to translate websites and the issues involved in the process.

You will learn many helpful nuggets from this interview.

The Full Interview:

The Main Takeaways of the interview:

Who is Tanya Quintieri:

  • She is an English to German and German to English translator.
  • Sher is a co-founder of an agency that provides international corporate solutions.
  • She is a designer of multilingual websites for different languages.
  • She works with different content management systems.

About The difference between translation and localization

  • Translation happens when you translate between languages that come from the same cultures.
  • localization is about taking into consideration the cultural background of the audience.
  • Images are a clear example of the difference between translation and localization.
  • The website UI is another clear example of localization. For example, the US websites collect the States, but this does not make sense in a German website.

Website content translation is not straightforward.

  • The original website content direct translation does not guarantee the same results in the translated copy.
  • People from different countries and languages use Google and search engines for different reasons.
  • Companies that don’t think about website accessibility lose about 20% of their website traffic.
  • Accessibility is about taking care of different browsers and devices, etc.
  • The local language should be used in the different communication methods on a website, such as chatbots.

The website translation should help the website to convert customers

  • The translated website should use the keywords that are used by people while searching online.
  • Considering keywords translation before the translation starts will help convert visitors into customers.
  • Consistency of terms and sentences across the website is important for the user experience.

What about Using Machine translation when it comes to website translation:

  • Using machine translation is better than hiring a cheap translator that delivers bad translations.
  • Website visitors will recognize the website is translated by a machine, such as Google Translate.
  • Machine translation doesn’t convert visitors into customers like a human translation will do.
  • It is always recommended to work with human translators who understand the domain.
  • Many smart machine translation engines understand the website translation process.
  • The language pair used can affect the quality of the machine translation engine.
  • Human translators should be familiar with the website translation tools.
  • If the translation is just for information purposes, a machine can do it.
  • Machine translation engines are not good at localizing websites.
  • Machine translation is faster, but not cheaper.

The website translation tools selection criteria.

  • It is preferable if the website translation software stores the translation in a form of memory.
  • Computer-Assisted Translation Tools (CAT tools) store the translation to reuse it in the future.
  • The software should support any language you may need to translate in the future.
  • The translator needs to be involved as soon as possible in the software selection process.
  • The software should help the website owner manage the translation process
  • It is recommended the translation be on the website owner’s servers.

I am the co-founder of TranslationPartner. I spend most of my business hours coaching our team members and leading the marketing department. Apart from this, I like reading history books and watching action movies.