Is Your Website Ready for Global Markets?

 

If done right, a multilingual website can help you expand your marketing reach, and also convey the fact that you are a global entity. An ever-growing number of companies recognize that a properly localized website can be a significant competitive advantage when entering new worldwide markets.

But — in the forefront of (and underneath) your nicely-designed current website, there could lurk unnoticed and hidden issues that need to be resolved before you decide to localize into other languages/cultures. A poorly localized website not only delivers reduced ROI, but it also may in fact do considerable harm to your company's perceived image or your product brand.

Here are five examples of the 25 key points that you should consider before you begin to translate your website:

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Global Technical Readiness

1. How will you detect the user's preferred language?

   You can use Javascript code in your HTML to detect the browser-language setting, or you can offer language choices on-screen. For on-screen language choices, "Language", or "Select your language" may mean little to people who don't speak English and pull-down menus may hide critical information. They may be limited to only one character set and may not properly display all languages. Perhaps discretely displaying all available languages on your homepage (please avoid the temptation of using flags) or having a localized gateway may be better options.

   Examples of unhelpful techniques:

   1. Language

      

      A non-English speaker may easily overlook "Language" and not find his/her
      site of choice.

    

   2. Drop-Down Menu

      

      Notice in this German website example that the "Select from 30 Languages" is in German, yet the actual language choices are all in English. Also, it's cumbersome to drop down and sort through 30 different language choices, especially since these particular choices are not even in alphabetical order.

    

   Examples of better techniques:

   1. Native Language List

      

      Note that the languages themselves are in their respective language.

    

   2. Global Portal:

      

      One nice feature for a global portal is a World map to locate marketing regions. Even if the users do not speak English, they know which spot to click. Ideally, a user click might cause a "zoom" to show a more detailed map of the region, with language choices or with specific locales as shown below.

      

      This global portal page makes it easier for customers to find what they need
      in their language.

   We can help your webmaster make the best decision, and show how to implement it.

 

2. How will you implement multilingual capability?

   Will you use server re-direction? Language directory structures? Different style-sheets?

   Many large companies use a server redirection to a market-specific website (such as Name.co.uk for a British site). This is appropriate for companies that wish to allow each market to maintain its own site. Most companies, however, simply use a language-directory structure.

   Here is an example of a directory structure that uses standard ISO language_country identifiers (zh_CN, for example refers to Chinese for China). Within each language directory there are also image and CSS (style sheet) directories:

    

        

   We can help you make the decisions that are best for you.

 

3. What will happen when the translated text gets "bigger" (longer) than your current language?

   For example, Spanish, German, etc. will typically "expand" by 30% or more (over the original English). This can result in unsightly distortions, turning your beautiful pages into a real mess.

   Original English version:
   
   

   Expanded, “pseudo-translated” version:
   
   

   Notice what happens when the bullet-items on the right expand by 30% in length due to translation. Pity the poor fellow in the image! Oops --- the title went askew. Oh-oh --- the bullets no longer line up.

   We can run pseudo-translation tools to help you pinpoint the problem areas.

 

4. What will happen when translated buttons (that are really images) expand in size?

   Some web-design tools (DreamWeaver, for one), will often "force" all images to conform to the size of the original image.

   Here is original DreamWeaver-created English:
   
   

   Here's what happened when image buttons were localized to German:
   
   

   Here’s the HTML-corrected version:
   
   

   We can help detect this problem, and correct the underlying HTML code.

 

5. How will your web pages display Asian-language text?

   Chinese, Korean and Japanese, for example, must be displayed in odd-numbered font sizes. 9-point is the minimum; 10-pt cannot be used. 11-pt is OK. For readability with modern high-resolution laptop/notebook PCs, Lao requires a minimum of a 13-pt font. Improper font sizes cause "clipping" of pixels, make the text unreadable or ugly, and prospective customers will quickly go elsewhere.

   Nothing causes a quicker exit than visiting a web site and having it look like this:
   
   

    

   Most visitors are not particularly knowledgeable about font display issues, and they would not know to go to View > Encoding > More… and select Korean—because the actual web pages are NOT entirely in the standard Unicode UTF-8, but in the obsolete (pre-2000) "code page" encoding and thus don’t display properly. If the user takes the time (and knows how) to fix it, then the result will look as shown below:
   
   

   We can help you utilize style sheets to properly handle multilingual requirements

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For a free copy of the complete "25-Point Website Globalization Readiness" checklist, please contact Medialocate at info@medialocate.comor call 1-800-776-0857.