A website in one language can only serve a single type of audience. So, if you want to expand and reach other clients that speak different languages, the content of your website must be translated.
The language to choose to translate your website content to is equally essential. In general, you will want to translate the content to the language of your target market. Some of the languages to consider translating your website to are:
- Mandarin,
- Hindi,
- Spanish,
- Russian,
- Portuguese.
There are several ways through which your website can be translated. Below are some of the most popular methods of translating the content of your website.
Human Translation
At the moment, human translation provides the best type of translation for your website. It is the most accurate form of translation as it takes into account culture and context when translating. Naturally, this form of translation is the most expensive. When you contract a human to translate your content, they will have to read and comprehend it first. Afterward, they will translate the entire content based on their understanding.
In most cases, when you read through human-translated content, you will see content that effectively communicates the same information to readers using another language. Therefore, with the help of a human translator, you are sure of getting an accurate translation. If you have a book on the website you want to translate, you should use human translators. You can use the best personal content translation services to get a quality translation job for your books.
Machine Translation
If you cannot afford to hire a human translator, you can use machine translation to translate your website content. However, this service will not give you the same quality as its human counterpart. Machine translation uses technology such as artificial intelligence to translate the content of your website from one language to another. It is usually fast. But there is a high degree of error when using a machine translation. Also, you do not expect to have translations done according to the context of the original language. Additionally, machine translation does not understand cultural peculiarities. Yet, it is a cheaper alternative to human translation.
Content Management System Translation
You can use content management systems (CMS) to translate the content of a website. Some of the CMS that allows website translations are Magento and WordPress. Each of these platforms has a slightly different method of carrying out translations.
- As for Magento, it uses extensions to translate a website content. Some are free, while others are paid. You will get the most accurate translations using the paid extension.
- WordPress generally uses plugins to translate the contents of a website. There are tons of plugins you can use on this platform to translate your website. Just like Magento, there are free and paid plugins.
With the CMS translations, you will get a fairly decent translation. However, just like with machine translation, CMS translation does not consider context and cultural realities when performing a translation. In general, the translation quality improves with every update. You can develop your translation extension or plugin if you are up to the task. But you must learn how to code to do so.
Conclusion
If you want to expand your business, you must translate it into several languages. You can perform this translation using three basic methods. These methods include human translation, machine translation, and CMS translation. Amongst these three, human translation is the best but also the most expensive.
About the Author
Melony Hart has a lot of passion for books and writing. She frequently creates informative content for readers that like to read about writing and translation. At the moment, she works as an independent writer.
