Creating a multilingual website is the key to reach new foreign markets. If you stick to just one or two languages, you are almost surely missing out on potential audiences. You may think that English is enough, but a tiny fraction of the world’s population speaks it. Even if you’re already persuaded to go multilingual online, you may be tempted to use machine translation or freelance translators to do the job. This article is all about why you should resist that temptation! If a high-quality translation solution is what you seek, we’ll show why it makes sense to go for a top-tier translation company. Here are the three top reasons why.
1. Only a Top Translation Company can Handle Multiple Languages
These days, if your website covers only one or two languages, you’re leaving important audiences out and, almost surely, leaving money on the table. As noted, English is the most popular second language in the world, but statistics show that it is dwarfed by Chinese and Spanish as a mother-tongue language. Only 379 million people speak English natively. That’s a mere 5% of the world’s population!
Cloning your website and translating it into a second language – let’s say Spanish – may be tempting to do with a low-cost freelance translator. But that simply can’t be done efficiently when you start considering three or more foreign tongues. Most companies with websites opt for a localization solution involving translation management software which makes local conversions more manageable.
But this kind of application is a lot more sophisticated and complex than WordPress: you will need trained software professionals to localize. Localization involves conversions of number and date formatting, measurement, and currency units. But the heart of localization is a translation, so it makes sense to seek a high-quality translation solution from a dedicated translation company.
2. Only a Translation Company can Guarantee and Certify Quality Work to Standards
There are some excellent professional translators out there, and you can find them relatively easily on freelance marketplace sites like Upwork or Freelancer.com. There you can search and filter for a freelance translator in your desired languages and required domain expertise. You can see their profiles and portfolios, ratings and rates, with comments and reviews of their work. You can post jobs and collect bids, or you can seek them out on your own. It’s not a bad solution for small translation jobs, but there is no way to assure with high certainty a high-quality translation that meets the standards of your clients, customers, and other audiences.
To get well-crafted, professional-quality translations that accurately convey the message across your multilingual audience, it’s best to go with an established translation company. When looking for a translation company to work with, one should consider: (1) supported languages; (2) areas of specialization; (3) quality of customer support. Key players in the industry such as translation company Tomedes, Gengo, or Lionbridge offer the widest selection of supported languages, global operational reach, and excellent project management and customer support. These firms have proven industry expertise, having worked with many of the world’s largest and well-known brands.
Tomedes has a global network of over 10,000 professionally accredited and vetted translators that work with industry-leading tools to enable efficient and accurate translations across its wide range of services. Gengo supports more than 70 language pairs through its integrated API, promising greater efficiency with its projects. Lionbridge on the other hand highlights its machine and AI translation capabilities which they are able to integrate with their clients’ proprietary technology.
3. A Top Translation Company Costs More but It Will Save Professionals a Lot of Time
Let’s assume you have a firm in the Tri-State area radiating from New York City. Certainly, you would want to include English and Spanish on your new website to cover the demographics of the area. But if your products or services have markets further afield, let’s say in China, home of billion-plus Mandarin speakers and hundreds of thousands in your metro. Sure, you could seek out freelance translators to do your job. But if so, you be embarking on a hellish time-suck juggling linguistic and programming resources to get your multilingual site just right.
The beauty of working with a translation company is that it should be a one-stop solution. Just Google “translation company” and all the languages and domain expertise that you require. Send a few emails to promising translation agencies and expect to get personal responses within a business day, likely within. Exploit eagerness for new business and negotiate a deal in the $0.10 to $0.20 per word range, depending on required languages and web content.
The translation company should respond with you a solid proposal and delivery schedule, along with the above-mentioned guarantee, and introduction – this is key – of a personal account manager, or two, for your project. Virtually meet the liaison(s) before signing a deal: chemistry is key! That account manager will save you hours in personal time, handling all relations with the professional linguists and, if all goes as usual, delivering on time and under budget. And keeping your new audiences from getting lost in translation!