The ultimate startup guide for translating your website
In my last blog entry, I asked you to please not count any spelling errors. My English is far from perfect, what is ok for writing a blog, but for our first language version of our beautiful instant messenger (and for the following ones as well), of course we did not want any mistakes. So we gave our language files to a “translation bureau” (LEO gave me this translation for “Übersetzungsbüro”…).
The price was 1.400 Euros for approximately 12-15 DIN A4 pages – quite some dough as far as I am concerned, but quality costs, right? Well, quality is not exactly what we got; otherwise this wouldn’t have been worth a blog entry.
So here are our recommendations for translating your website:
- We have stored all of our text-files in a database. This saves A LOT of time, especially when you make changes afterwards, so this should be a must, if you ever plan to go international.
- Go to a well established “translation bureau”. It will cost more but it is probably worth the extra money…
- You’ve probably spend considerable time formulating every single sentence of your website to make it sound just right. Trust me, the translators won’t. It’s their job, not their baby, like it is for you. Calculate some extra time for making it beautiful again.
- The chances that the translator has absolutely no clue about what you are doing are high! But the “translation bureau” will tell you, that they have specialists in exactly your field anyway. Ask to speak to the translator, to explain him your service prior to the translation. This will save some time after you get the translation back.
- If the translation bureau is professional, they will ask you if you prefer British English or American English (or continental Spanish or Latin American Spanish or whatever). As I said, if they are professional…
- Any other recommendations: Please comment!
In our case as a B2B software provider a professional translation is a must. If you run a B2C website, maybe a friend that is a native speaker will do as well. But the “terms of service” alone are usually quite some work and in my option nothing lets a website look worse than a poorly translated website, don’t you think?
