TECHHAMMER INC.

Website localization crosses language barriers! 32% of internet users around the world are non-native English speakers. With PC ownership and access to the internet most rapidly increasing outside of North America and Europe, this figure will increase even more. Website localization breaks linguistic barriers and opens doors to other continents.

Companies are now waking up to the fact that English is no longer the international language but one of many including French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. With the number of companies now realizing the benefits of website localization, there are more pages in foreign languages than ever before. This means if your company's site has not undergone the localization process yet, it will be playing catch up in the future.

Website localization builds credibility! If your company only has a site in English and your competitor in all major languages, which one will gain more credibility? Localization of your website demonstrates that you are a truly international player. In addition, through localization it shows that you understand, value and have respect for that particular country or region.

Website localization increases revenue! Billions of dollars, pounds and euros in potential revenue are lost each year due to lack of investment in website localization. Most internet users will naturally feel more comfortable and understand a company better if their information, products or services are presented in their native language. By undergoing the website localization process you access potentially millions of new customers.

You don't have to be a genius to understand the importance and benefits of a multilingual website. However, there are times when it is more of a burden than a blessing

Let's begin by listing the benefits of investing in a multilingual website:

1. Your corporate message can reach any number of new potential customers without printing or distribution costs. As a communications solution, it can be scaled to any audience size and projected to any location at no extra cost.
2. You can create this message once, and manage it from one location, for consistency in branding, content and quality. The simplicity and centrality of this process means that it costs much less money and takes much less time to create and deliver a message to your audiences.
3. Rapidly changing content can published and revised in many languages simultaneously without the need to manage an inventory of printed material for global distribution. The information could be anything from sales material for a new product to technical support documentation for a new software release.
4. If you already have a website in one language, then its content is already in digital form, organized for translation. It's a simple matter to deliver the files to a translation agency by email or FTP. This unique characteristic of websites reduces turnaround and logistical problems for you the client, especially on highly interactive sites.
5. The linguistic quality of a website translation can (and must) be excellent. It works like this: since your web is highly portable, it can be translated by professionals who live and work in their mother tongue countries. These translators have the best and most current command of their own languages. Native and resident translators must be used for leading edge webs - on culture and the Web itself, for example - since much of this vocabulary is new and changing.

The problems with localized sites are in the updating procedures. The best webs change frequently and are often created by different contributors working in scattered geographies. Usually, no one is responsible for tracking changes to the editorial content. As a result, no one knows when or what has changed, nor even who changed it.

When a website is revised, it is common for part but not all of an HTML file to change. It is important to preserve the still valid translation of the unchanged text, both for editorial consistency and to avoid paying for the same translation many times over.

For these reasons, maintaining the translations up-to-date with the source language content can become an expensive logistical nightmare.

The solution is to outsource the entire problem of multilingual site maintenance to a translation agency equipped to handle it. Techhammer has multiple partners in the language translation industry and can easily handle projects on almost any scale from small websites to multi-national corporate web applications.