What are the most common errors in website translation and what happens when you underestimate them?
Translating a website is both a technical and linguistic challenge. If approached the wrong way, it can breed mistrust and distrust in your brand and products and subsequently hurt business.
If you’re thinking about expanding your online brand into new markets, make sure you get off on the right foot. So let’s find out what the most common errors are when translating a website and how we can avoid them. Let’s start.
Use machine translation
Google Translate and DeepL are fantastic machine translation tools, so much so that more than a few people use them to translate their website. In just a few simple copy-pastes it is possible to obtain tons of multilingual content. Fantastic, right? No, not really.
There is no worse mistake than translating a text using an online translator. A bad translation will simply turn potential customers away from your website irremediably. It may be wonderful to read content in our native language, but grammatical and contextual errors can sow distrust in the company and its products or services.
Rely on non-professional translators
Speaking two languages perfectly does not guarantee that you will be able to successfully carry out any type of translation. A professional translator not only has in-depth knowledge of two or more languages, but also has a method and skills that are impossible to improvise, which guarantee the quality of the final result.
Entrusting the translation of a website to an arranged translator is not a great idea, the risk is that in the transition from one language to another, context, nuances of meaning and appropriate vocabulary are lost.
Localize (poorly) a website
Localization is the process by which a translator adapts a text from one language to another. The goal is to transform the content of a website in a completely natural way, so that readers don’t even notice that that particular text has been translated.
Localization is a complex activity that requires the cooperation of multiple figures and skills. Translators make use of their linguistic skills, cultural knowledge and appropriate localization software, as well as extensive study of the specific niche or sector, to complete the adaptation task. Adapting a text poorly can have the same effect as a machine translation, i.e. generating distrust in customers.
Not choosing the correct languages for your website translation
One of the most common mistakes is to assume that a translation into English is sufficient to widely broaden your customer base, since it is the third most spoken language in the world and the first most spoken in the West.
To avoid this, ask yourself the following questions before choosing the languages to translate your website into:
What is the most used language to search on Google in the country where I want to target my business?
What idiomatic peculiarities exist in that country? For example, the English used in the United States is different from that used in the United Kingdom. This is why you need to take this into account when translating your website.
Avoid translation errors for your website with LingoYou
LingoYou is the translation agency that translates and localizes your website, allowing you to communicate with the world.
Marketing Team LingoYou
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