Website Localization FAQ

• Do you provide Machine Translation or Human Translation of websites?
  
• What languages do you work in?
  
• Will the web pages you translate for us be found on foreign language search engines (like Google.de, Yahoo.fr)?
  
• Will the web pages be optimized for foreign language search engines?
  
• How do you translate dynamic website content, e.g., text generated from a database or a script?
  
• Who does the hosting?
  
• How much IT work will we need to implement your website translation solution?
  
• How do I submit my website for translation?
  
• How do I know that the website translation you are providing is good quality?
  
• Do you translate the graphic elements of the website?
  
• Do you implement Version Control in website localization projects?
  
• How do you perform quality tests on websites that you localize?
  
• How do you handle country-specific and cultural aspects of website localization?
  
  

Q: Do you provide Machine Translation or Human Translation of websites?
A: We provide professional human translation of websites. Machine translation, while constantly improving, does not produce a high quality result which one would expect from a website of a reputable company. Using machine translation may produce incorrect translation, and will definitely produce awkwardly written sentences and grammar mistakes. Another drawback of machine translation is that the pages are translated 'on-the-fly' and are not cached on a real hosted server. Therefore, the translated web pages can not be found on the search engines and your website will not come up on foreign language keyword searches.

Q: What languages do you work in?
A: We can translate your website into the following languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Arabic.

Q: Will the web pages you translate for us be found on foreign language search engines (like Google.de, Yahoo.fr)?
A: Yes. We provide you with translated 'landing' pages which are regular, hosted web pages. The search engines will crawl these pages and they will come up in relevant keyword searches. We will also provide you with translated web page file names which should get you a boost on your search engine rankings.

Q: Will the web pages be optimized for foreign language search engines?
A: We translate the web page title and the meta tags into each language. For example, if your website is optimized for 'hotels in paris,' we will give you a web page which is optimized for 'hôtels à Paris.'

Q: How do you translate dynamic website content, e.g., text generated from a database or a script?
A: Dynamic website content is translated by our translation server, which incorporates custom translation memories and dictionaries which have your industry- and company-specific terminology. This ensures that dynamic content is translated at professional human translation quality.

Q: Who does the hosting?
A: You can host the translated website on your own company servers, or you can let us host the translated website. If we do the hosting, we can configure the subdomain name to appear as a part of your website.

Q: How much IT work will we need to implement your website translation solution?
A: Very little IT work is needed by the customer-your IT people will not need to spend a lot of time to implement our solution. You may need to install some scripts on your server in order to translate dynamic content, but no IT work other than that.

Q: How do I submit my website for translation?
A: Just send an email to info@gts-translation.com, specify the website URL and the languages you want to translate into. We will send you a price quote and other relevant information.

Q: How do I know that the website translation you are providing is good quality?

A: Click here for a description of our translation quality process. All website content is translated and edited by native, in-country translators to ensure quality and cultural consistency in the target countries.

Q: Do you translate the graphic elements of the website?
A: Yes. Our graphics team knows how to handle all graphics formats such as GIF, JPG, BMP, Flash and other forms of animated graphics and banners. Our graphics people work with the translator to determine how the graphic elements should be translated, taking size, screen location, color and other cultural aspects into consideration.

Q. Do you implement Version Control in website localization projects?
A: Yes. Whenever new content is added to the primary language of your website, or content is updated, your website is updated automatically. We then perform linguistic review of the changes to ensure that there are no errors in the update. Furthermore, our website translation system incorporates translation memories and custom dictionaries which contain legacy translations and company- and industry-specific terminology. This ensures a basic level of high translation quality.

Q. How do you perform quality tests on websites that you localize?
A: Before the site is made public, we perform extensive quality control and linguistic testing online. We check the displayed pages for linguistic accuracy and verify that there are no display glitches. We also check using several Internet browsers and encoding options, to ensure that your site can be viewed by all with no errors.

Q. How do you handle country-specific and cultural aspects of website localization?
A: Website localization is not just language translation and adjustment of server-side files. A wide range of country-specific and cultural issues must be taken into consideration if you wish to provide a website that will appear native in all countries and regions. There are many examples of possible website localization gaffes, not including language issues. For example, there are colors that should be avoided in certain countries where specific superstitions abound. Measures, currencies, addresses and phone numbers can be displayed differently depending on the country. Cars are driven on different sides of the road, traffic signs vary. Colloquialism can vary from country to country, religious issues may result, just to mention some potential obstacles you may encounter on the path to producing a good multilingual site. Our team of in-country experts review the website during the localization process, and produce a cultural report when needed if adjustments are required.