10 · Resources
Translating a website to open new markets
Translating a site for a new market means translating the pages, but also the URLs, meta tags, forms and emails, then declaring each version to search engines with hreflang tags. Reviewed machine translation holds up when the trade vocabulary is fixed first.
Start with the guide
Translating a website: method and pitfalls to avoidTranslating a website means translating far more than its pages: its tags, forms, emails and error page, at URLs specific to each language. Here are the decisions to make before the first word is translated, and the checks to run before publishing a language.
20 articles
Understand8 min
AI subtitles and dubbing: taking your videos abroad
AI makes translated subtitles, and even dubbing, affordable for your demos, tutorials and webinars. What each level brings, what platforms already do, where the machine gets it wrong, and what a real person's voice requires in consent and transparency.
Choose and price7 min
Translating your website with AI: automatic or reviewed?
Having everything reviewed is expensive, and reviewing nothing lets errors through in languages that nobody at your company reads. The split is decided page by page, depending on what each page commits you to.
Practical guide8 min
Brand glossary: keeping translations consistent
The same product called three different things on three pages, and readers wonder whether there are three products. A brand glossary fixes the terms that are not up for debate, before the first translation, whatever the tool or the translator.
Choose and price7 min
DeepL, Google or an LLM: which translates your trade best
Every provider publishes a test it wins, and independent evaluations crown a different winner from one year to the next. For a specialised text, the only reliable answer comes from a trial on your own texts, language by language, judged by someone who reads the language.
Understand7 min
Keywords abroad: redo the research, don't translate it
A translated keyword list gives you dictionary words, not the words customers in another country type. The common word, the volume, the intent and sometimes the search engine all change: the research is redone on the ground, and it guides the translation.
Understand8 min
Localize, don't just translate: prices, proof and forms
A page can be perfectly translated and still feel foreign: a price in the wrong currency, a date read backwards, a form that rejects a name, a meeting with no time zone. Localizing means adapting what changes from one country to another, not just the words.
Understand8 min
Translation quality: measuring it without rereading it all
Nobody rereads every sentence of a website in six languages. Translation quality can still be measured: automatic checks that catch errors without reading, metrics that compare tools, and a sample reviewed by someone who reads the language, with errors counted by type and severity.
Understand7 min
Multilingual team: working without a shared language
A subsidiary abroad, an acquisition, remote hires: more and more teams bring together people who do not speak the same language. Translated captions and message translation help, but it is the rules on writing, meetings and documentation that make people work together.
Understand7 min
Opening an English-speaking market: beyond language
Translating your site into English is not enough to open an English-speaking market. The UK, the US and Australia share neither spelling, currency nor taxes, and an English page competes with the whole English-speaking web.
Choose and price8 min
China and Southeast Asia: website, payment, platforms
Selling in China or Southeast Asia does not start with translating the website. Search engines, messaging apps, payment methods and marketplaces are different there, and they decide which way in to take.
Choose and price7 min
Translating a whole blog: which articles first
Translating a whole blog at once multiplies the cost, the errors and the pages nobody reads. It is better to start with the articles that already attract visitors from the country, lead to an offer and will still be true in a year, and to use the blog as a test of the market.
Understand7 min
Translating customer support emails without hiring
Answering every customer in their language does not take one person per language. The support tool translates both ways, canned replies are translated once, and the messages that commit you go through someone who reads the language.