It's a big world out there with millions of potential customers for your business. Here's 
a step-by-step guide to translating your web site into different languages and opening 
up new revenue streams

The number of worldwide Internet users ended 2005 at a mind-boggling 1.17 billion (source: 
eTForecasts, January 2006 report), triple the number at the start of last year. And by now, 
figure it's up a couple hundred million more.

The bottom line is, it's increasingly a wild, wired world, and it's full of potential 
customers for your products and services. But while our computers seem to have no problem 
talking to each other, we're still speaking hundreds of different languages, and your 
website needs to get multi-lingual before you can start counting the euros, pesos and yen.

There are four steps to get started in translating your site for international customers: 

# Get to know your customer base 
# Decide which language to use 
# Select pages or a portion of your site to translate 
# Find a translation method 

Get to Know Your Customer Base

You probably have an idea of who your target audience is, but did you know other audiences 
are just waiting for you to reach them? A quick way to get a snapshot of who is viewing and 
shopping on your web site is to check your referring URLs. Using your weblogs, scan the 
referring URL list for international sites and different language web sites within the 
United States, such as uk.yahoo.com (United Kingdom) or espanol.yahoo.com (U.S. in Spanish). 
Note how many visits and orders stem from each URL. For instance, mx.yahoo.com (Mexico) 
- 2,890 visits, 60 orders.

You can also determine international location information from your existing customer base. 
Review all the orders you have processed, and when you see an international order, note 
which country the customer is from. As your records grow, you should begin to see inter-
national customer location trends.

Decide Which Language to Use

The URL reference lists, combined with your order records, can act as a starting point to 
help you verify where your potential customer base is located, and assist in determining 
which language to use for translation. Keep in mind, your new audience may actually live 
in the United States.

Once you have a solid idea about who will be included in your company's expanded target 
audience, you can start thinking about the languages that will be most appropriate for 
translation. Before you make a final decision, keep these things in mind: 

# Be location-specific. A language can translate differently from country to country. 
For example, Castilian Spanish (Spain) is very different from the Spanish spoken in South 
America and the Spanish spoken in the southwestern United States. 
# Respond effectively. Do you have the capability to effectively respond to customer 
inquiries or sales leads in the appropriate languages? If so, who will be responsible for 
possible email correspondence or phone conversations?

Select Pages or a Portion of Your Site to Translate

You are now ready to begin selecting pages or a portion of your web site to translate. Why 
only parts or pages of your web site? By gradually translating your web site into another 
language, you will have much-needed time to test and refine your customer-to-company contact 
system. Don't forget, along with the site translation, you'll need to establish how your 
business will handle emails, phone conversations and even faxes in another language.

Your web site's "About Us" section, "Customer Service" section, privacy policy or "FAQs" 
page are all good pages to translate. If your business has an important press release or 
special announcement that pertains to your new-language audience, have just that page trans-
lated. Translate on a page-by-page basis, keeping expenses low and creating steady growth of 
the new language within your web site.

Find a Translation Method

The primary methods used to translate web sites are machine, or automatic, translation; and 
professional translation. Machine translators, or online auto-language applications, translate 
words or blocks of copy according to the criteria you specify.

You've probably seen and even used an online translation tool for fun or to get the gist of 
an article published in another language. If you've ever tested a machine translation tool 
by inserting text into the tool, setting the language criteria, translating and then 
reversing the translation process, you may have received some very funny results.

However, it's not so funny when it pertains to your company's web site content. Auto trans-
lation can pose all kinds of risky translation problems. "There is nothing worse than a web 
site that's been translated with funny or offensive results," says Herve Rodriguez, president 
of San Francisco-based Excel Translations. "If you're going to translate a web site, do it 
well or don't do it at all."

This is where human translation comes in handy. Professional translation companies provide 
translation services designed to fit the needs of your project, including a team of translators, 
editors, proofreaders and project managers. Native translators can prevent language errors 
from happening, and keep your company far away from the funny factor.

When you start looking for a translation company, ask these questions: 

# Do you have native translators available? 
# What are your prices? Do you charge per word or per project? 
# Will you need any graphic files from us to edit and translate? 
# Do I need to prepare any industry-specific literature to help with the translation? 
# How long will the project take? 

Remember, when you begin the web site translation process, you are not only preparing to connect 
with a larger market, but laying the groundwork for an exciting future for you, your web site and 
your new customers.

Source: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/nl/mar06in.php1