In order to establish an online global business presence, successful firms are transitioning their website into multiple languages. Considering the tough competition worldwide, increasing media presence with a multilingual website is a fiscally efficient way to reach international markets. This article encourages website owners to develop a multilingual website to explain products and services, increasing their business orders from non-English speaking customers.
A single language website alone is not sufficient to survive in the international market. The most consistent problem that most website owners' face today is the lack of website visitors actually converting into customers. This is primarily due to miscommunication arising between websites and visitors due to language barriers. Many non-English speaking customers still prefer to access websites only in their native language. In order to sell services or products to the foreign customers, it is necessary to convey messages to foreign customers in their local language.
Designing a multilingual website might initially seem overwhelming. There are many companies offering website translation services. These experts translate website information in such a way that it attracts and retains every customer speaking the varied foreign languages. Websites become searchable by major search engines as well as by potential customers in their own preferred language.
Website translators usually apply a number of advanced techniques to make the website multilingual user friendly. Most of these techniques are primarily related to website designs issues. Depending upon the particular design requirements, these experts utilize the best and most appropriate techniques for successful website translation. The two most well recognized techniques for website translation are the "two tree" concept and the "one-tree-fits-all-languages" concept.
When a completely new webpage is designed for a different language, it is built using the "two tree" concept. For example, an English index_en.htm file is made built and then a separate index_fr.htm file is made for a French page. These two files are set in different folders. This is the "two-tree" concept, where both English and French versions are from the same database, yet they are implemented as two different websites.
This is an easy and quick way to segregate multilingual pages. If the website has been designed using the two-tree technique; this allows easy customization of your web-pages and reduces the website maintenance cost. However, this process has some disadvantages. The biggest drawback is that a special "start page" allowing users to select the language of his/her choice will need to be built. Consequently, there will be no relationship between the similar pages of English and French language. The simplest way to overcome from this difficulty is to manually design a separate 'see this page in French' button at the bottom of each English webpage.
As the business the website represents continues to grow, constant updating of a two tree multilingual website becomes very time consuming, tedious and a continual duplication of efforts. To avoid this labor intensive work and increase efficiency, the new "one-tree-fits-all-languages" concept was developed.
In the new "one tree fits all languages" model, multiple languages are available in a one page tree and all language versions are made available within this single page design. One single page tree is designed; all pages in this tree are created in a default language and each page of this tree is then translated into another language.
Choosing between the two-tree design and the one-tree-fits-all-languages design depends entirely on the website requirements and available budget. Whichever concept is chosen, expert translations service providers will definitely assist in effectively and efficiently creating the best multilingual website. Web-pages will always remain continually updated in all of the chosen languages.