Websites are a crucial part of today's businesses. They generate revenue, offer an avenue for promotion and are an easily accessible means of providing information on a company. The global economy now demands that companies look beyond national borders if they wish to expand.

Websites are an integral part of going global.

Website localization is the process of modifying an existing website to make it accessible, usable and culturally suitable to a new target audience. For example, taking a Spanish, South America focused website and modifying it for a British audience. Part of this process involves the translation of the content.

At Kwintessential we assist companies going global by helping them with their website translation projects.

Although website translation is in essence similar to normal translation work as it deals with words, sentences and language, it does bring different challenges that need to be considered properly. This is due to the combination of linguistic, visual, technical and financial factors.

How does a Website Translation work?

Before commencing a website translation project one should ask questions such as:

• is this website being translated? Is it to generate revenue or to provide information?
• Who is the target audience? Are they from a particular age group, generation or socio-economic class?
• Are there any language variations? If you are promoting a site in Arabic is it aimed at Gulf Arabs or North African Arabs?
• What impact could culture have on the website translation? Think of possible cross cultural differences in language use, colours, pictures and images.
• Does or will your website change its content frequently? If so, will you need an on-going service that provides small pieces of translation work?
• Does your website designer have the programming capability to deal with new characters and numerals?

All the above questions in one way or another will impact the success of your website localization or translation project.

Our website translation works on a similar basis to our other translation work. We calculate per 1000 words and fees vary according to the nature, size and language of the project.