The internet has the potential to put a global audience at your fingertips, but there’s far more to reaching across cultural divides than simply putting your website out there and waiting for people to visit it. There are issues to do with language, design and SEO that all need to be addressed before your website becomes truly accessible ‘world-wide’. Thankfully, though, there are a number of simple tricks you can apply that will make it all a less daunting process.
Translate your content
This is perhaps the most obvious but also the most important tip. English is arguably the most commonly used language internationally, but it still serves as a native tongue for only about 20% of the world’s population. Clearly, an English-only website will be inaccessible to a huge percentage of your potential online audience of 1.8 billion people.
There are various ways to translate your content and the method you choose may reflect budget and time constraints. The easiest way is to add a translation widget such as Google Translate or Babelfish to your site, allowing visitors to translate text to the language of their choice. Remember that any text embedded in Flash files won’t be translated – which is (yet another) a good argument against using too much Flash.
If you’re confident in using inline functions, you can build inline translation code into the site using Ajax, in connection with geolocation, to facilitate a smooth immersive translation process that directs the visitor to the correct language version, as determined by where their ISP is hosted.
If you do use machine translation, try to make your original content as simple and direct as possible and avoid specific cultural references, as these will invariably not translate well.
If budget allows, having your copy professionally translated is the optimum choice. Using a native speaker from the target market will ensure that meaning and nuances will carry over to your translated site and any linguistic or cultural mistakes can be avoided.
Use horizontal navigation bars
Not all languages read from left to right like English. Scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew read from right to left. While CSS makes it easy to flip a vertical navigation bar (which would normally be located on the left-hand side for a left-to-right language) and script direction from one side to the other, using a horizontal bar located across the top of the page will add a sense of continuity and cohesive design to localized versions of your site.
Use Unicode UTF-8
Unicode UTF-8 is the ideal character encoding tool. Compatible with over 90 different written languages or scripts, it’s also supported by all the major browsers. Even if you see no need for a localized site in Arabic or Simplified Chinese right now, using UTF-8 will give you the flexibility to create one in the future and it also incorporates all the additional characters from extended Latin alphabets (such as the German Ä, Ö, Ü and ß).
Bear in mind that some scripts and languages will take up more space than others to convey the same information and this may affect your page design.
Use appropriate colours
The use of colours can enhance a site’s visual appeal and help convey a theme or emotion, but some colours have different connotations in different cultures. White, for example, can signify marriage in the west but is associated with death and mourning in much of the east.
Tailor your design to the market
Some cultures (such as Japan and China) can be defined as ‘high context’ cultures. These cultures have a tendency to draw information from context and situation. ‘Low context’ cultures (including Germany, Scandinavia and North America) tend to look for explicitly worded and expressed information. In terms of website design, this means that sites with a more visual and immersive feel may be better received in high context cultures and sites with concise, clear layouts and text will appeal more to low context cultures. As an example, take a look at Nokia’s clearly structured and information-heavy German site, with prices and products listed on the front page, and compare it to the more visually oriented Chinese version.
Nokia’s Chinese site
Nokia’s German site
Localize your SEO
There’s little point having a beautifully designed series of websites which are accessible to a range of different cultures if nobody can find them. SEO keywords can vary tremendously from location to location so don’t just translate your keywords directly. A little research may reveal that colloquialisms, alternative terms or even misspellings are more commonly used in your new target market. Research keywords not only on the local versions of search giants like Google but also on any major local competitors such as Baidu (the leading search engine in China).
About the author
Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translations company Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 employs some 4,000 professional freelance translators covering a hundred different language combinations. Follow Christian on Twitter: @Lingo24.
Note from the editor
Christian has written for a number of other blogs on this same subject, so if are very interested in this, check out his other articles:
Excellent post, developing your site to be understandable in this global interaction is a great idea. I like babelfish for translations to other languages.
And don’t use text-transform in your css stylesheet. In some languages (like my native lang, Greek) things can get really messy. Get some consultation from a pro translator depending on the language.
Excellent article. A must-read! =)
great info :)
REally valuable for those who working with different clients from different continents.
Hi there:)!
I see one more difference in how news websites are made in Western and Eastern Europe and it’s mainly about advertisements.
In Western Europe there is rarely such a thing as ‘good taste’. Adverts are everywhere, often seriously disturbing visitor’s experience, playing unwanted sounds or breaking up the whole page to display itself in a full screen mode. I noticed it at main Polish news sites like gazeta.pl or wp.pl and facebook-like nk.pl.
On the other hand Western European and North American websites(facebook, nyt.com, guardian.co.uk, tagesschau.de) find a good balance between content and adverts. I think that is what the Eastern European visitors need and that’s what they would appreciate on the website.
Despite situation got better over the last years it’s still couple steps away from western standards.
I found a good tool for translating the website , check it out : http://translateth.is/ :)
Excellent article, he wrote a similar one for us as well on our blog.
This seriously came just in time. I’m just starting to design a site for an arabic singer http://www.georgeelias.net and this is perfect to read prior to that.
thanks for the awesome tips.
Great article, Chris…tian! :)
Some interesting points, but I’m still wandering – no Japanese guy is going to come to a white website, and assume “Oh, what a sad site! I feel like moaning” :)
Great info, though, and I’ll be sure to implement it in my future projects.
Not related to the post, bu apparentl Digging into WordPress has been hacked…
Great Article and some interesting points pointed out. Specially, the encoding one. Regarding translation, I would like to point out that if the site is truly meant to be for global audience, they should consider professional translators rather than depending on algorithms (Even though Google and Babelfish are pretty good ). Using web services to translate the content can be very funny at times. For example, on my site I use this WP plugin which in turn uses Google’s translation service. It converts my content but most of the sentences are pretty funny! I also used Google’s translation service on one of my projects and the client in the end agreed that a real translator is required for it ( and all my work in implementing the Google’s translation service went down the drain lol).
So basically, if proper translation is of not utmost importance, then as per Chris, going for translation services is good :)
I almost never use auto-translation websites for dynamic content (even static sometimes)because they’re never 100% or even near that. Best example is arabic websites which are very hard to translate since many words are not found in both english and arabic dictionaries.
Other points are pretty good Chris!
Thank you for this fantastic article, it came just in time to me.
I was just saying that I am suffering a lot with Arabic web design as I get to do some of my sites in Arabic, and it’s really a night mare.
http://www.elmalak.info/suffering-arabic-web-design/
I found here some surely helpful hints to make use of in my next projects.
elmalak
So a good next article or topic discussion would be:
If not using automated translation, how do you manage it in your CMS. Such as WordPress ?
Different installations ? Seperate themes ? Child themes perhaps ? Category structure ? Translations within the same post but other languages in Custom Fields ?
Then how about category names that are being displayed. Lots of options and problems.
Would sure like a real-world answer to that !
There is a few plug-in for this
I would say this in one line : a very informative post.
I would recommend hiring a professional translator instead of using google translate or other alternatives as by doing this your global visitors will never get a personal touch/feel in your website.
Also, when designing Arabic websites, make sure you include this line in your CSS
html * {unicode-bidi:embed;}
Meedan is a great website that translates news from English sources into Arabic and vice versa. It also does the same with comments and has a very convenient design!
Wow never thought about this one in my webdesign: “Use horizontal navigation bars”. Nice article! Good article because soon I will translate my website Time to get this things done ;)
I’m surprise you recommend the use of machine translation on a website. Such translation are always awful and simply look unprofessional.
For any business website a professional translation is the only option for me.
“which would normally be located on the left-hand side for a left-to-right language”
It just occurred to me how awkward nav bars are when they are on the right side of a page… Very simple but good tip to use a horizontal nav bar.
Stream Companies
It is better to use English than automated translations. You can facilitate machine translation of your website (by including a button of some sort), but never do it automatically and certainly not based on geolocation (what about culturally diverse, multi-lingual environments). The majority of the world does in fact speak more than one language. The monolingual perception of Americans (and English for that matter) is a reality only for a very small percentage of the world’s population.
I do read a number of languages, so I would be much more offended by a bad translation than by a well written original.
It is much more important to be aware of culturally-bound concepts (e.g. references to ‘famous’ sports figures, television figures, the rules of base-ball etc.) and idiomatic language. An international audience will not always understand figures of speech, word jokes etc.
Writing in a clear, concrete language will get you a very long way in accommodating for an international audience. Stay away from difficult words, abstract, untranslatable words and figures of speech. If you need to target specific markets, then translation and intercultural awareness become important.
It is also a phallacy (bad example of writing for an international audience, ‘error’ would be the better word choice) to think that you, the messenger are the only one responsible for adapting yourself to the culture of the recipient. Every time two people from a different background interact, a new, ‘intercultural’ space is created that operates by its own rules (these rules will often be negociated on the spot). A japanese customer will not expect an American to do business like a japanese would. An American trying to act japanese will at best look funny at worst really stupid…
I think that the most important message is to try and be aware of your own cultural assumptions. Learning a second language (whichever one) or immersing yourself in another culture are very good ways to do this.
Generalities about colour or booklets about how to do business with the Middle East will not really help you there. These things are much too subtle to capture in a booklet (look at food packaging in the UK and in continental Europe, two places that are not so culturally different; even in Holland and Flanders there are big differences on this level and we share the same language…) and on the other hand they cannot describe the intercultural space that is created by the interaction between two cultures.
Learn a lot from this article, localize our SEO.