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The Unexpected Pains of Website TranslationLocalizing your website for global customers is a lot harder than it sounds—especially when you use in-house resources.

2The Unexpected Pains of Website Translation

Introduction

Rolling out fully-translated websites to serve your new international customers is a lot harder than it sounds—especially for companies that want to take on this challenge using in-house resources. Here’s why:

In-house website translation projects are massive, overwhelming, and an ongoing drain on resources.

Translation is about more than linguistics—most teams lack the expertise and efficient technologies to manage the necessary technical and operational workflows.

However, digital-first translation agencies can eliminate these costs and in-house burdens.

Read on to learn more.


Table of Contents

It’s Really Complicated ............................................................. 4

Complexities and Challenges.................................................. 6

Staffing, Time and Effort ................................................... 6

Technical Expertise ............................................................ 8

Linguistic and Cultural Expertise .................................... 9

It’s About More Than Translation ........................................10

Conclusion ................................................................................12

About MotionPoint .................................................................13


It’s Really Complicated

At first glance, an in-house website translation project doesn’t sound particularly imposing. It’s just swapping English content for slightly different content, right?

Wrong. Traditionally, the manual process of translating website content involves a time-wasting, iterative process of exporting content, sending source files to translators, editing those translations for quality, importing the content into your CMS, testing, publishing and more.


That sounds daunting. And that’s just for the content on one webpage. Repeat that process for every page on your site. Add in any additions to the scope of the site, or customizations for specific markets. And then multiply all that effort by the number of multilingual websites you’ll be managing.

Translation workflows grow exponentially, depending on your site’s scope and the number of multilingual websites you manage.


Complexities and Challenges

Website translation projects are massive and overwhelming—and they’re beyond the capabilities and resources of most in-house teams. Consider the challenges you’ll face as you launch and continually operate your multilingual sites:

Staffing, Time and EffortDo you have enough people to manage these new technologies and processes? Can your staff handle the ongoing burden of managing workflows for translated websites on top of the work they already do? Do you need to hire new people?

Understand that if you hire more people or not, your staff will still be tasked with overseeing the overall management of the project. This day in, day out oversight generates effort and costs that are difficult to quantify—and rapidly mount up. These aren’t tasks that will ever appear as line items … which means it’s easy to bleed out on needless effort and costs.


This becomes especially apparent during the ongoing operation of your localized site. Inefficient processes are replicated day after day, including:

Every one of these tasks, and the dozens more your team will encounter every day of the project, requires at least a small bit of effort. And every bit of effort has a cost.

Maintaining the resources required to develop and manage translation workflows, quality assurance and project management

Overseeing the transmission of translatable content to in-house translation teams

Thoroughly identifying and compiling all new or updated content for translation (including text, images, multimedia, PDFs and more)

Owning the process of getting that material translated quickly and accurately

Owning the process of vetting the translated content for accuracy, authenticity and brand consistency

Integrating the translated content into the proper international “instance” of your multilingual CMS, to serve the right global market

Assuring the translated content fits seamlessly within established page templates, and doesn’t “break” page designs due to word growth and other translation-related issues

Managing the exponential growth of personnel and resources when adding even more languages to serve new markets


Technical ExpertiseConsider the skills of your marketing team, and what you hired its members to do. They’re experts in marketing, and in creating resonant, persuasive content for your primary-market website. However, are they:

Technical experts in creating international instances of a CMS?

Experts in the unique UX expectations of customers in every global market?

Experts in the technical, marketing and linguistic expertise required to continually operate localized sites on an ongoing basis?

The answer, almost certainly, is no. Engaging a website translation agency that specializes in these tasks—and many others—is far a smarter business move. It also eliminates operational complexity, costs and effort for your team.


Linguistic and Cultural ExpertiseDo your people have the linguistic and cultural expertise to translate (and edit) your multilingual content? This takes more than language fluency—you need skilled, professional linguists to preserve accuracy and your brand’s voice.

1. This best practice isn’t always embraced by companies. Many companies ask bilingual employees to vet translations provided by their agencies. But there’s a problem with that approach. These employees are rarely professional translators, yet have the “final say” on translation quality.

2. You don’t want an editorial process like that. That creates bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and they’re often caused by one person’s linguistic perspective. This leads to costly time- and resource-wasting revisions and iterations.

3. While you’ll certainly want to lean on the expertise of native speakers to inform your site’s translation quality, their feedback is best provided at the beginning of a website project, not during its day-to-day operation. These employees can assist in the creation of glossaries and style guides—valuable resources that offsite translators use to ensure consistent translations and brand voice.

4. Only digital-first agencies that specialize in website translation have the proper technical, linguistic, and cultural experience to ensure timely, accurate translations throughout the life of the project.

A


It’s About More Than Translation

When it comes to website translation, you have to get past “line-item” thinking.

The concept of translation is often seen by project stakeholders as a single line item. That makes sense—after all, that’s how vendors submit their invoices. It’s simply assumed that an in-house website translation project can be accounted for in the same way.

But “translation” is about far more than translation. Dozens of individual elements contribute to those costs, including tasks that few executives have full visibility into. Beyond the actual workflow of translating content, “translation” also includes staff time, technology usage, access to specific resources and much more.


Let’s examine just one of those elements mentioned on the previous page: technology usage. The scope and cost of creating or managing website translation technologies can quickly overwhelm most in-house teams. Most marketers hope the multilingual features of their CMS can efficiently handle the workload. Unfortunately, those tools are often undercooked, and can’t handle the day-to-day rigors of website translation.

Developing solutions for those shortcomings requires time and attention—and additional money for additional technologies. And even with those investments, it’s often unclear if the solution will work in the long-term. Updates or changes to your technology stack down the road often create unforeseen challenges and costs.

The scope and cost of

creating or managing

website translation

technologies can

quickly overwhelm

most in-house teams.


Conclusion

Remember, the actual task of translating digital text, images and other online elements represents only a sliver of the true cost of website translation. Costs should also cover technologies, smart translation management, and efficient software built to save you money.

The best digital-first website translation vendors provide these capabilities and more, eliminating the need for in-house teams (and the costs associated with building those teams). Look for solutions that combine the best translations with leading content-management technologies that minimize costs and speed to market.

As you speak to these vendors, be sure to get a clear idea of what “translation” means to them, and the services included in with those translations. Remember, you should be paying for more than mere translated words. You should be paying for excellent translation management software, and more.


About MotionPoint

MotionPoint solves the operational complexity and cost of website localization. Unlike all other approaches, our technology and turn-key solution are built specifically for this purpose.

We translate, deploy, and operate multilingual websites, optimizing the customer experience across all channels.

[email protected]

MotionPoint Corporation

United StatesLyons Technology Center4661 Johnson RoadCoconut Creek, FL 33073

+1.954.421.0890

EuropeRegus CibelesCalle de Alcalá 61, Room 32328014 Madrid

+34.917.944.707

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