Website localisation is not simply a fancy name for translating websites. As DePalma pointed out,

"Whether your company translates Web sites, marketing materials or owner's manuals for international markets, the information should be readily comprehensible. That means it should be grammatically correct, spell-checked, unambiguous and fluent. It should be tailored to local cultural mores, expectations, business practices and laws." (Donald A. DePalma, "translation as a competitive advantage")

In order to demonstrate important components for consideration when getting a website localised, Pam Baker has published an article for E-Commerce Times in August 2009 and offered invaluable remarks for effective e-Commerce websites localisation. These remarks also shed light on other business websites localisation.

First and foremost, pick your countries.

Determining what languages your website to be localised into, how big the potential online audience for your products or services is the first important aspect to consider. "Countries That Matter Most Online in 2009: U.S., Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, China and Australia.

The top 10 languages that provide the biggest bang for a business' buck are: English, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, Russian and Swedish." (Common Sense Advisory's report "Countries That Matter Most Online in 2009", cited by Pam Baker in "Speaking the right language online")

Second, always use human translators.

Pam Baker quotes, "The machine translations are inaccurate; they can do the job for getting a general idea of what something is about, but when it comes to selling products, the translation has to be 100 percent accurate. "Worse still, machine translation can easily lead to expensive mistakes for your business. David Ewalt jokes in his blog, "This photo of a sign in China demonstrates why you should never rely on machine translation for anything important".

(Picture from: http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/2008/07/no-babel-fish-yet)

Third, prepare to redesign your web site.

Fourth, begin the translation transformation.

Read the original article "Speaking the right language online"