Localisation, Internationalisation & Translation

Contents

• Making Users Feel At Home
• Internationalisation
• Localisation
• Translation
• Conclusion

Making Users Feel At Home

It is important for your users to feel comfortable with using your site. The more at home they feel the easier it will be for them to use your site, and perhaps purchase your products. The essential decisions about your site design should apply to almost every user, these are general usability techniques. There are many other nations than the USA that have recently seen a dramatic increase in the number of Internet users. These nations may have different requirements for your design to fit. One of the most obvious of these is a language barrier. A high percentage of the sites on the Internet are in American English. Many of the new users of the Internet may have little knowledge of the language. It is important then, if you intend to communicate to a global audience to translate your pages, create "internationalised" features of your main site, or perhaps create separate localised versions.

Internationalisation

If you have a limited budget then you may want to take a few steps that ensure that your site is suited for a global audience. There are several points that you need to consider:

Users from different countries may not be able to fully comprehend difficult & complex language. When writing for an international audience try to keep the language that you use short and to the point. Along the same lines metaphors and associations between words may not be known. Try to keep metaphors to a minimum, for example the phrase "Make like a tree and leave" is understood as (an attempt) at a pun by native English-language speakers. To those who don't know the full English language the word for "leaves" as bits of trees may not be known and the meaning of the phrase (pun) is lost. This also applies to pictures and icons where it may be an associated meaning.

Check that any material that you have used is not offensive to other cultures, this includes swearing etc. You have got to be very careful about this, an example from personal experience is when the word "God" was used out of context, in a sample URL, a strict Christian took offence and complained. Although you may not regard the use of the word in a certain context as offensive someone else might. Check for words of exclamation, such as stronger versions of "Wow!" and "goodness me!", although you may have been brought up to accept these expressions other people may not. If someone takes offence at your language they will leave your site and find another one.

When quoting times for certain events you should always put in the time-zone that you are referring to, or to covert your time into GMT. Many people around the world will know their time zone relative to GMT, but not for example relative to an American time zone.

Measurements and units should be checked for meaning. The main example of this is the use of the word billion. In American-English it means 1000 million, whereas in British-English it means 1 million million. There is quite a big difference between the two numbers. If you are unsure then it is better to use standard numerical digits, 1 000 000 000, instead of a word. Also be careful when including decimal places. In some countries a comma is used for the decimal place rather than a point (.), this may cause confusion as well. Do not include commas when quoting large values, just leave spaces.

Localisation

When you have a large customer base in another country than your own then it may be a good idea to get another version of your web site designed to suit that local audience. This localisation may make users feel better about your company, they can see you have made an effort to suit their needs. This makes a great opportunity for user growth in that particular area/audience. There are many steps to take when localising your site:

Try to get in contact with a native of that country. No one knows a country better than someone from that country. They can be used to check over almost every aspect of the localisation site.

Rethink the priorities for that country in the information they are searching for and the way that it is presented. For example you may be selling designer clothes, the site for a country with long, cold, winters should place much more emphasis on their range of woolly jumpers and coats than a site for a warmer country.

If possible then get the relavant domain name for the country. For example a site translated into French may be placed at "http://www.yourcompany.fr". Another way of breaking your site down may be to provide a main language/country selection page at the root of your site and to provided the localised sites in sub-directories. Naming these directories is important, you should either name the directory the name of the country or language, or use the standard country codes as the name.

If possible translate the web site into the local language. Tips on doing so are provided below:

Translation

If you are going to translate material then get it right. There is nothing worse that a poorly translated page. The users will see that the language used does not really make sense. This screams "unprofessional" at the user, they may leave the site and try to find another site that has got the translations correct. To solve this problem try to use a proper, qualified, translator. It is preferable for the translator to be a native speaker of the language. This also irons out any problems for use of outdated language as native speakers will be up-to-date with the latest terms and phrases.

Conclusion

There are many advantages of promoting your site to those outside the country that you live in and it will become increasingly important in the new global markets/communication channels to ensure that your overseas users feel comfortable with your site.