After working out the logistics and infrastructure of your multilingual or multi-regional site,you'll want to have your site's content translated and regionalized to the appropriate languageand country combinations you're targeting. This is going to take some time and resources, and it's not a place where you're going to want to cut corners. If you don't have the proper resources in-house, there are some very good translation and interpretation services out there that will ensure that the quality of your page translations in other languages is just as high as the content written in your primary language.
One thing you probably don't want to do is use automated translation services. If you've ever used tools like Google Translate or Babelfish then you'll know that while they can be of tremendous help in getting across a general idea, they're clearly not providing professional or even sometimes coherent results. For the user experience, this is one of those cases where using this kind of translation tool, may actually not be better than nothing. Imagine your perception of a website, riddled with grammatical errors and messages that just plain don't make sense. Probably not a company you'd like to do business with.
There are of course more advanced and more expensive software solutions that are better, but the truth is that you don't really want to translate your website. You want to make sure that human expertise, experience, and intuition is used to interpret your website. And from the SEO perspective, the use of these automated translations is not really recommended, since it could be considered auto-generated content, which goes directly against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. In the end, of course, the decision is yours. But if you do decide that automated translations are better than no translations at all, then you might want to block the auto-translated pages that are generated, using the noindex Robot Meta Tag.
We've discussed in a previous video how important it is to translate everything that a search engine can see which is often more than just the text rendered in the browser. Titles and meta descriptions, alt and title tags of images and links, videos, image text and more are often missed. And while many sites simply translate the same exact content page by page across their sites, it's usually a good idea to take it one step further. First, make sure that the page is relevant and useful in the context of your language and location target.
You'll find that taking into account cultural and linguistic differences, the nature of the content itself might change. Watch out for idioms, metaphors, cultural references and more. The words can be translated, but often the meaning will be lost. Simple things like expressions can cause lots of problems with poor translators. Take for example the saying, "You're pulling my leg." That can certainly be translated word for word but a Spanish speaker would think you're crazy. In Spanish, the expression would be, "Me estas tomando el pelo," which actually means "You're pulling my hair." And even that expression will be used more or lesscommonly, depending on which Spanish-speaking country you're targeting.
So if you operate in Mexico, Argentina, Spain and Costa Rica, you might consider having not just one translation for the Spanish language, but four for the regionalized versions of each of your pages. Making reference to things like local heroes or a sport can also detract from your local credibility. Sure, you can translate the words, but if you're an American company, sayingthat your products are endorsed by the local baseball team, you won't get much value from that statement in countries where the soccer clubs rule supreme. Again, this is why it's so important to enlist the services of native speakers, who truly understand not just the language, but the way that language is used in a specific target location.
And when you're looking for translation services and help, it's good to find a firm or a resource that understands the basic tenets of SEO. Remember, you're going to have to go through the process of formal, localized keyword research. And you'll be mapping your target keywords to the pages that will be translated. If your translator understands where to placeand how to use those target keywords, you'll be able to set yourself up for maximum search visibility and reach that target audience in the most appropriate and effective ways. Making sure that you're interpreting your website rather than just translating its pages will help you to better use all of the standard optimization concepts, and ensure that you're creating and promoting content that truly speaks to users in their own languages.
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