How to Build a Multilingual Website? [For Global Reach & Markets]

To reach international customers in the global marketplace, your website will be one of the crucial aspects of your localization mission.

We understand that building a multilingual website can require lots of effort because you have to consider several factors while doing so such as cultural specifics, national legislation, local preferences, and so on.

To get the best possible results, this blog will introduce you to some essential steps required for streamlining the tailor made website localization process.

Steps to Build a Multilingual Website

To build a well-organized and appealing multilingual website, here are a few steps that you need to follow.

1- Know your Expansion Goals

This is the crucial one.

Pick different languages that you will want to include on your website. The choice will be entirely based on your audience demographics, budget, and resources.

2- Make an Action Plan

Before jumping to making an action plan, answer these questions-

– Do you want a website launch in its totality in the preferred languages?

– Do you want to launch the website just in your specific domestic market or in foreign markets?

Once you have suitable answers, you can make an action plan and start setting up your rigorous translation and localization process.

3- Know Types of Multilingual Sites

The next thing you need to decide on whether you want to target at the local level or global level.

In the case of Local Level:

If your website is available in just one language let’s say your official language, it may not appeal to potential customers and encourage them to buy from it. This situation results in a drop in sales and revenue because you have not delivered all the required information in the specific locale.

In the case of Global Level:

Maybe you want to serve the global community and sell your product in global markets too.

To get the ball rolling, you would significantly improve your online presence with localization of your website in the languages widely spoken in your target markets.

Later on, you may decide on setting up a regional office, which, in turn, would need a different approach to properly update your website with the different regional versions needed.

4- Prepare Your Content

The initial step to ensure an effective localization effort is the internationalization of your website content. This is a technical method which is ideal for implementing at the beginning of the content development cycle to assure smooth sailing.

When done rightly, internationalization may lead to every small text chunk being translatable by serving sufficient space for the different characters as well as space requirements in various locales; correct time, numeric, date formatting, etc.

Furthermore, your content will be adjusted in the right format, style, tone and layout to ensure accurate website translation.

Important Tip: Don’t forget about conducting a keyword analysis for every target country and give proper guidelines to local search engine optimization (SEO) as well as other cultural specifics beforehand.

5- Translate Your Content

First and foremost, strictly say no to the automatic translation that allows immediate translation of the content on a website. Such a type of translation is strictly avoided because the possibilities of errors and silly mistakes are high.

What we suggest is to get your content translated and get it proofread by a real person. To ensure a seamless translation process, you can look for a professional translation firm.

There are great benefits of translation company and one of them is that it has human translators who can analyze language from a contextual and an emotional point of view to provide you with precise translation.

6- Maintain Translation Quality

Once all your content is translated, the quality review is a must after a final translation before your multilingual website goes live. Most language service providers suggest a 2-step or 3-step content translation process.

Reviewers should go through the entire translated content of the website to know the preferred style, terminology, as well as established glossary terms specific to your business.

This step is crucial to ensure that everyone involved understands the right terminology meaning as well as correct use. This is the greatest assurance of your glossary serving as a high-quality base for any upcoming translation projects.

So these are all the steps that you need to walk through to ensure the proper localization of your website.

We know your next question – In-house or Outsourced localization?

Many website owners are often hesitant about making a team for in-house localization or hiring a productive localization company in Delhi.

If you are deciding to make a time, then it will take a lot of time of yours. Because not every member in your in-house team has good knowledge of translation. Whereas, talented translation and localization project managers, usually go for human translation to ensure consistent and error-free translation.

If you want the most accurate website localization, simply contact us at +91-8527599523 or simply send us an instant quote.