Three statements on multilingual web presences

Three statements on multilingual web presences

First Without software-based translation and localization management, it is not

It is not so long ago that many mid-sized companies were content to their site to update only once a year in order to bring their product presentations and product information up to date. The deadline for this: just before the most important fair of the year. Often it was then also the web agency, which had einzupflegen this annual update. Today, most companies still use although their websites for content management systems and gain a degree of self-sufficiency - but this often remains unchanged despite CMS problematic is the management of the various language versions. Provides its customers more than just a German and an English version - certainly the minimum standard today - things are very complex very quickly. Both closely integrated as possible into the CMS - - Without an automated workflow for the localization and translation management solution without the enterprises that operate a pan-European or even global markets, no longer cope. The most basic technical principles of localization meet a lot of CMS today: the representation of all Unicode character sets, namely, the more exotic like Cyrillic, Hebrew or Chinese included.

Second The translation supply chain in the content management system to define

First, a company must be clear about which pages of the German master site must be located at all. If I sell in my range of agricultural machinery as well as vintage machines, makes a localization of the information for my Italian and Spanish sites still make sense, but I sell on the Russian site may only combine. Which product and product data are therefore generally locate for which market like? Ideally, the enterprise-specific localization workflow stored in the CMS, where it is managed and monitored: defined in such a company is not only the content as it flows in the various countries, it learns about reporting features also which localizations are complete and pending that still. It would be for a company but a bit naive to believe that one can easily access to the CMS-shelf and represent their own, company-specific localization workflow easily into a standard software. A suitable location is just not a standard process and often takes but a lot of consulting and sometimes customization. It is also important to have, in the CMS on a meaningful dependency and version management: how many jobs are actually affected my site if I change or update certain information? What are the dependencies for every single case?

Third A proprietary translation management increases the efficiency

A central element of each location is of course the translation. There are external to the CMS various translation management systems available, which incidentally also among professional translators themselves are in use. In many cases, it may make sense for a company to operate this translation management system right itself, as an add-on for its own CMS, and to come himself to enjoy the potential to increase efficiency. Especially if a company is very much with external translators, there are often very unsightly media breaks. If the text exchange takes place in the form of e-mail attached Word file, the danger is of course great that the CMS emerge suddenly Word control characters that are not there belong, or tables in the CMS after the translation is totally misrepresented. To use XML as an interchange format with external translators, since something like the minimum requirement. As for the translation management systems for businesses but makes so much sense, its database, the translation memory of the company. Binding proprietary dictionaries in different languages ​​provide a consistent and always correct taxonomy. Such a taxonomy for once defined the terms of a company donates optionally a secondary use in the adaptation and localization of technical documentation. Furthermore, the translation memory, the database already made translations of texts and text modules for cost reduction: the company must pay redundant, repeated translations of the same passages of text a second time.