Translate first, think later

August 5th, 2008 Amir Posted in Business |

When you start a new web project, your hands are full with burning issues and you certainly don’t want to complicate yourself with other ones. Getting ready to operate in multiple language should be right on top of that list.

What happens if your project goes well?

You’ve built a great service, people are using it and you’re making money. Now what? You probably want to also be profitable. To do that, you need to make more without spending more – not that complicated…

The easiest way to earn more is to have more people use your new service, right? Considering the fact that any single language in the world doesn’t make up the majority of the web population, the easiest way to get more users is to let people from other countries use your system.

Going back six months – before your grand opening

I’m assuming, you already know about Google’s sandbox and it’s delay effect for new websites. You probably set up a domain and placed the public pages for your new service. If you did that a few months before launching, and got some bloggers talking about it, your website is already known to Google and ranks reasonable well. So, by the time you launch, prospective customers can already find what you’re offering. Some might sign up for your Beta program, some are getting your newsletter and everyone is waiting for you to launch.

Set aside a few hours and about $600 and get these public pages translated to popular languages such as German, French and Spanish. By the time you’ve launched, you’ll already have the web statistics to show you what kind of demand your new service has in Europe, French Canada and Latin America and even with the 20% Hispanic US population. Not too bad for $600 and the time it takes to have lunch!

Now, you’re not guessing and not assuming. Without fancy brainstorming and market experts, you’ve got valuable data that’s carved for your own business, telling you where you can grow.

Think about localizing as you’re designing

Your programmers will do what you ask them to do – so don’t worry. Require that all texts in the application be stored separately from the code. It’s pretty important, so I’ll say it again:

Mostly, that’s all you’ll need to do, in order to be ready to localize, for the next few months. There are many different ways of doing that – and they’re all OK. During the first day, your programmers will tell you to add at least 6 months to the schedule (not counting testing and QA). Then, they’ll get used to the idea and will see it’s not a problem at all.
A few immediate side benefits:

• You’ll be able to spell and grammar check the English texts
• Your usability expert will be able to make changes without asking help from the programmers
• Everyone can review and comment on texts without reading 15K lines of code

And, the grand prize – you’re all ready to localize. No code changes and no new bugs. When you decide you want to be nice to French people, just add French texts – and that’s it!

What can ICanLocalize do to help you?

We can make every step of the way easier and less expensive. We let computers do labor intensive work and only ask translators to translate.
Our system can build the translated version of your public pages, based on your existing website. It will use the same HTML and replace the texts. Then, it will make sure that all links are still working and that everything functions correctly.
Don’t worry about making changes – small or large. The translation will update whenever there a change in the original language pages. You only have to pay for new or modified texts – the design doesn’t matter at all.

Then, when you’re ready to really go global, we’ll also help you with the automated emails your system sends, the texts in the application and anything else that needs doing. We’ll make sure that everything is translated coherently and reads natural in any language.

Our system runs in self-service, so you’re always in charge of your project. You can communicate directly with the translators and iron out any details. You’ll also get a great price, since your project doesn’t need any management.

Read more about our translation service and see how we can help!