Website translation

The success factors for multilingual websites

The advantages when translating websites, however, are somewhat different from those when translating manuals, datasheets, etc.

Translation memory is less important. Important for website translation:

Support of data exchange formats – Avoidance of Copy&Paste
Integration of a terminology database for uniform terminology

Do you want to localize your website efficiently and be found internationally?

We will be happy to advise you!

Efficient website localization – the workflow matters

As with many other tasks for the international marketing of products, technical translation plays an important role in the localization of websites. Often, however, extracting the source texts to be translated and entering the translated texts is a decisive cost factor.

In the following we consider 2 possible workflows:

Traditional website translation workflow

Manual copy&paste. The customer extracts the texts from the CMS system for his homepage and copies them into Word files / alternatively the translation service provider reads out the content as HTML directly from the German website

“Cheap translation agency” translates the German texts and delivers the translated website as a Word file

Manual copy&paste again. The customer copies the texts paragraph by paragraph from the Word file into the CMS system. This takes time and is very error-prone, especially with more exotic languages such as Chinese.

Optimized website translation workflow

Simple export. The customer extracts the texts as XML export or XLIFF export from the CMS system – with just a few mouse clicks.

PRODOC Translations translates the German texts and delivers the translated website as XML file or XLIFF file

Easy import. The customer imports the translated XML or XLIFF files into the CMS system – with just a few mouse clicks. The translated text is automatically in the right place and is already perfectly formatted.

Cost comparison of optimized workflow – traditional workflow

We assume a single web page with approx. 300 words. The values are examples purely for illustration.

Conclusion: Even though the net translation cost with PRODOC is 1.5x more expensive, our customers save money in the end. And they make fewer mistakes because the cumbersome manual input of translations is no longer necessary.

Dipl.-Kffr. Sanne Jerxsen, Marketing at PRODOC Translations

Selecting a suitable CMS system

At PRODOC, we can generally use memoQ’s flexible import filter to translate all websites; their data can be exported in XML or XLIFF format and then imported again.

However, this requires, for each customer, the configuration and validation of a customer-specific filter, for which additional costs are incurred. These usually pay for themselves quickly when more than 10 web pages need to be translated.

For the systems described below, we provide pre-configured filter configurations for website translation.

WordPress with WPML

WPML is a WordPress plug-in that enables the exchange of data between WordPress and any CAT tool. In some cases, a customer-specific XML configuration is necessary.

Our article on WordPress and WPML shows in detail how you can collaborate with us using WPML.