Setting Up A Bilingual Business Website

Posted on 30. Dec, 2009 by Emmanuelle Archer in Blog, Expat Entrepreneurs, Expat Life
3 comments

Do you speak another language? Do you want to do business with both your native country and your adopted country? Then you’re going to need a bilingual, if not multilingual, website.

That’s a great asset, obviously – it means that you can reach a wider target market than your monolingual competitors. However, it’s not just a matter of translating your content word for word, and voilà, a bilingual website!

Finding the right tone

Have you noticed that persuading people to trust you, and buy from you, works differently in your host country than it does back home? Do the ads you see on billboards and in magazines strike you as very… foreign? That’s your cue that local customers respond best to a different approach than the one you’re used to.

You must take these cultural differences into account when writing your website content. For example, when writing on my (Canadian) English website, my tone is more casual, and I reveal more of my personality – that’s because North Americans want to do business with people they trust and like.

By contrast, the French want to be logically persuaded that they’ll be in capable hands, and that nothing will go wrong should they decide to hire me. So the tone on my French website is more businesslike, and I have to put more emphasis on my credentials and professional experience.

What makes your local audience tick? What are they after? What sort of feel or emotion will they be looking for on your website?

Getting the translation right

For the love of all that is holy (and linguistically correct), stay away from those online translator things, or your website will be the laughing stock of your industry.

Give yourself more time than you think you’ll need to translate your content. Some paragraphs will need to be entirely re-written to strike the right tone. Some idioms will be impossible to translate, and you’ll have to look for cultural references that are relevant your foreign audience. It’s a long and sometimes tricky process.

Having a native speaker proofread your content is a must. If that person is part of your target audience, even better!

Hire a local copywriter – not a translator – if you’re not 100% confident in your linguistic skills. A copywriter will know what local customers are looking for on a website, unlike a translator who won’t be able to help you with your marketing and sales copy.

Website design considerations

Allow for more space, or be prepared to edit your text ruthlessly, if your translated content ends up much longer than the English version. Some languages just take more words than others to express the same idea – my French paragraphs are usually twice as long as the corresponding English text, if not more.

Decide if you want to translate all or part of your company name, especially if the language you’re translating into uses a different alphabet. This may mean modifying your logo as well.

If you’re translating into a right-to-left language, how will that impact your layout and navigation?

What to do if you’re not fully fluent?

If you have a multilingual website, your clients will naturally assume that you are fully bilingual, or that you have a native speaker in your team. They’ll expect you to work with them in their mother tongue, and to grasp even the subtlest cultural nuances.

Can you live up to these expectations? It’s completely OK if you can’t – but make that very clear on your website. No one will take offense if you explain that you’re providing bilingual content for their convenience, and that you conduct day-to-day business in English.

Even simply being able to exchange a few sentences in your clients’ mother tongue is a great way to build rapport. I’m sad to say that my foreign languages are getting rusty for lack of practice, but it’s still a thrill to greet my clients in their own language, especially if, like Armenian or Swedish, it’s not a widespread one.

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Emmanuelle

Images by leoniewise (top) and dimitridf (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons