Localization is the catch-all phrase for various services that convert and adapt content to a new locality. The lion’s share of this work is a translation from language to another, but localization also includes adapting units, formatting, accounting for cultural variations, and adjusting the content accordingly. Translating web content helps it to become more attractive, understandable, and engaging to a local population, potentially converting “foreigners” into customers. We’ll discuss some of the ways that you can parlay website translation services into increased revenues and profits.
The language industry is growing fast and website translation is a catalyst
How can you grow your business on the back of the trend toward globalization? Despite the travel restrictions and slowdowns resulting from the COVID-19 crisis, and to some extent because of it, the world has become a smaller place. It’s not hard to see how one region of the world affects the other. Language barriers remain a factor, but a robust industry has emerged to narrow language gaps. According to Nimdzi, the language services industry amounted to $53.6 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to 70 billion by 2027. There are good reasons to hop on that bandwagon.
According to Ofer Tirosh, CEO of Tomedes, website translation services represent just a small fraction of that total. Despite being attributed only to a small portion of the global translation industry, the market is comprised of thousands of players from large-scale operations to freelancers. Tirosh insists that when looking for the right website translation services, it’s best to understand first exactly what you need: to which languages do you plan to expand your content to, what is your timeline, does your content need specific industry knowledge, etc.
How to Make Quick Money from Website Translation Services?
Undertaking any content localization project is a strategic decision and a long-term investment with substantial upfront costs. Website translation is not rocket science but it does demand technical sophistication and linguistic acumen. The costs and duration of your project will depend on how many languages and localities you support, which languages and upside potential of each local market. Do your homework.
It is advisable to test the waters with one or more manageable pilot projects to measure the profit potential of translating your website content to one or more additional languages. Consider the translation and localization costs of a direct mail campaign and social media advertising, leveraging Facebook’s ability to target language and other demographic factors. Make sure to account for marketing and technical support staff – translation agency, freelance, or in-house – to support the campaign. Keep careful track of expenses and income, incorporating A-B Testing methods to differentiate which content and language combinations bring in the most income.
Repeat this process for several languages and local targets, including regional and national variations on the same language, for example, British vs. American English or the French of Marseilles vs. the French of Montreal. In the end, website translation is a numbers game: the KPIs you reach for engagement and conversion will need to be evaluated in terms of revenue yield and cost per conversion.
How to Choose the Right Website Translation Partners to Maximize Profit?
A key consideration is who will be your website translation service partners. Translation agencies and localization companies abound. Moreover, there are tens of thousands of freelancers offering website translation services at competitive rates on platforms like Upwork and Freelancer.com. It may be very tempting to hire freelance translators available for a fraction of what an agency would charge. Lower costs can transform your bottom line for any website translation effort.
This is a reasonable strategy if you are just testing the waters of website translation, but it will soon become unmanageable if you are localizing more than one language or locality. Managing freelancers is doable but the downside is the personal attention it requires from you, and the higher risks of working with a collection of individuals. Working with a top-tier translation company or localization agency gives you a one-stop-shop that can do the internal management of teams doing the translating and localizing of your website and social media while giving you the confidence of partnering with an agency with an established reputation and accreditation, able to deliver certified translations on-demand and equipped to handle a major localization effort.
Another tempting avenue to profitable localization is to exploit improvements in machine translation technology. The Google Translate API is among the application programming interfaces that can integrate auto-translation on your website or app. Utilities like Zapier and IFTTT make it easy to translate your website automatically. Lower labor costs mean higher profitability for your localization effort. There are also WordPress plugins for generating website translations. Just avoid relying on software translation for high-profile published content, lest your new customers get lost in a tangled and mangled website translation. AI-driven machine translation has improved in recent years, but it’s still no match for an expert mother-tongue linguist.
