Today we live in a digital first connected world where people seek seamless online experiences and instant gratification. For business owners this means building a strong online presence for better visibility and reach. First impressions matter and your website is the first touchpoint for most customers and hence needs to be impactful. Though English is often considered the primary language on the internet, only 25.9% internet users access the internet in English. So should you translate a website in multiple languages? The simple answer is yes.
Why Website Translation is a Necessity in Today’s Digitally Connected World?
When planning a website, user-friendliness, simple navigation, an attractive user-interface, and SEO are the top things on a business owner’s mind. However, language is one of the key elements in the context of user-friendliness. No matter how attractive and easy to navigate your website may be, if it is in a language that the end user does not understand it will not be able to engage them. As per a survey 73% customers globally prefer to read reviews written in their own language when shopping online. They are more comfortable buying from websites that are in a language they are familiar with. Zara, Nike, Airbnb, IKEA, Netflix are great examples of how by going multilingual businesses can connect with and retain a global customer base. The success of these brands underscore the importance of translating a website in multiple languages in today’s digital world.
Translating a website enables a business to reach out to more customers, build a more credible relationship with their target audience, and bring an element of personalization – the holy grail to customer engagement and retention. However, making a website and then translating it in multiple languages is not a one time activity, it is an ongoing process. Translating a website with its multiple pages and layers can be overwhelming. In this blog we break down the process of how to translate a website step by step. Let’s get started.
How to Translate a Website
1. Identify your business need
Having a multilingual website is a great business strategy but is it really required for your business? Are you as a business ready to expand into other markets and scale your production/services to meet the demand of newer geographies? Answer these questions because translating a website into multiple languages involves substantial time, effort, and costs. Identify the markets you want to target and translate your website only for those languages.
For example: You are a home grown business specialising in making homemade pickles and honey. You already have a website in English and you are based out of Delhi with deliveries only in NCR (National Capital Region). You now plan to extend your services in Maharashtra and Gujarat. To start with you could have your website translated in Hindi, Marathi, and Gujarati only.
2. Define the scope
Evaluate your website and identify parts that have to be translated. Not all words or sections of a website may need to be translated in the native language of your target audience. In the initial phase some businesses may not want to translate their blogs, case studies etc. Certain industries may need to retain industry specific terms irrespective of the language. Such content needs to be transliterated instead of translated.
Suggested read: Translation vs Transliteration
A few images, colours, elements may need to be changed to make the website culturally suitable for your target audience. Translating a website in different languages also involves doing an SEO optimization of the website for those languages for easy discovery by your target audience. In summary, translation is not just about changing the language – translation with context is the key to successful website translation. Anuvadak, an AI-backed translation management platform goes beyond just translating your website content. It takes care of image localization, SEO optimization, and even web analytics.
3. Preparing your content
Not all content on your website needs to be translated. Some key terms, phrases, taglines etc have to be retained. This is especially true for sectors like banking, healthcare, and education where they have to keep some industry specific terms consistent across languages. For example a bank may want to retain terms like loan, interest, mutual funds, tax etc when translating their website in languages other than English.
Pro tip: Make a glossary of industry specific terms and phrases.
Translation platforms such as Anuvadak by Reverie assist you in assessing your website content and build a glossary of terms. Extract hidden content like meta description, image alt text, etc. on a file from the backend as all of these will have to be translated too for your website to be discovered in native language search results.
4. Identifying your translation approach
Website translation can be manual, human or hybrid. Each of these approaches have their own benefits and pitfalls. A hybrid approach that combines machine translation with human post editing is the preferred approach for most businesses. Translation management platforms like Anuvadak facilitate context aware translations in multiple languages both Indian and foreign. The platform effortlessly integrates new content by detecting and sending it for translator review, maintaining a current and coherent multilingual web presence.
5. Translating your website
Using a translation management system like Anuvadak is a great way to translate your website quickly. It expedites the overall translation process, is easy to install and integrate and compatible with your existing tech stack.
- Anuvadak has 3 integration methods – Javascript based, API based, and technology integrators. Both JS integration and API integration work with any tech stack.
- Integrate Anuvadak using a JS code (javascript code) / Anuvadak API and select the languages you wish to translate your website in. Anuvadak supports translation in all official 23 Indian languages and foreign languages.
- Once the integration is complete our translation experts then proofread and make the required edits to the translated content. This ensures accurate and contextual translations.
- The website is now ready to be published with dedicated urls (uniform resource locator) for each language.
Given below is a pictorial representation of Anuvadak’s translation workflow.
The Anuvadak Advantage
At the heart of Anuvadak is its Indian language specific neural machine translation (NMT) engine which expedites the website translation process. Glossary and smart transliteration ensures accurate and realistic translations ensuring consistent brand communication. The user-friendly dashboard makes proof-reading and editing of translated content easy. Continuous localization ensures any content change in the source English content is updated on the translated web pages in real-time. Below is a workflow of Anuvadak’s continuous website localization.
Anuvadak also identifies and localizes underlying metadata and relevant tags to ensure SEO compatibility in multiple languages. With Anuvadak’s API based integration companies get access to the translated content at the server level. This gives them an option to fetch translated content from Anuvadak or store it in their own database which in turn ensures a faster website loading time in different languages.
6. Implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Now that you have translated your website, implement SEO best practices for each of the translated web pages to ensure it is easily discovered by the right target audience. Use appropriate keywords for each of the translated pages. A keyword that may have a high search volume in Marathi may not be relevant in Gujarati at all. Tweak product descriptions and content on your home page to align with your target audience culture and search preferences. Add hreflang tags to specify the language and region of your pages to search engines. Hreflang tags help search engines understand which version of a website to display to which user.
7. Test your website
Now that you have translated your website, test the website not just for accuracy of translated content but also how the user interface looks for different languages. Where do all the CTAs lead to? Are they leading to the correct translated webpage? Is your translated website responsive? Is the customer’s complete journey localized? Check for navigation experience, website load time etc. In short, check all the translated webpages the same way you would test your primary website.
Looking Forward
In 2025 and beyond having a website is a non-negotiable for a business to have a broader outreach, visibility, and credibility. Most people will look up information on your business online, be it a prospective employee, a customer planning to make a purchase, or a potential service provider planning to collaborate with you for business. However, with more and more people accessing the web in native languages it is imperative to translate your website in multiple languages to make it more accessible to your target audience. Anuvadak, a cutting-edge localization and translation management platform makes a complex task like website translation fast, easy, scalable and seamless. To know more about Reverie’s website translation and localization services get in touch with our team today.
Faqs
What is Anuvadak?
Anuvadak is a website translation and localization platform. It enables businesses to translate, display, and manage multilingual content on their website with ease.
How many languages does Anuvadak support?
Anuvadak supports all official 23 Indian languages and foreign languages as well.
What is a glossary?
Glossary is a list of words, industry specific key terms, and phrases that a business wants to keep the same in all languages. For example, a lending firm may want to retain the term ‘loan’ as loan in all languages.
Is it necessary to translate your entire website content?
This depends on the industry and business. For an e-commerce platform it is important to translate the content of the entire customer journey from logging in to checkout. All product descriptions and customer reviews should be translated as well. They may not translate blogs if any in the first phase.
Does Reverie provide industry specific custom solutions?
Yes, we provide custom localization and translation solutions tailored to your unique business needs.
