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email us at chris@litchfieldmorris.co.uk
The internet is a global marketplace, viewing the visitor statistics for our clients, and even our own website shows that many visitors come from non English language speaking countries.
Many visitors to our own site are downloading out Joomla modules (blog here). For our clients there are many reasons a foreign visitor may visit the website. For instance, Bruton Knowles have a large property database on their website and this may be driving foreign visitors looking for property investments. Another example is Northgate Training Games, that sell their products, via their e-commerce website to a global customer base.
For one particular client, McCloy Legal, the need to converse with their foreign clients has driven them to have their entire website translated into two other languages. Visitors can then choose to dynamically change the language of the website from English to French or Russian. The website is built using the Joomla CMS and has an integrated component (Joomfish) which handles the translation of each individual page. Litchfield Morris installed and configured the Joomla component, customized the language switching module to the requirements, and entered the translated text. Some additional coding was required to complete the translation of the online payment page. The online payment page uses a custom integration with an HSBC online merchant account and this was handled via an additional language file that is dynamically loaded depending on which language is selected.
Some may ask, why not just use one of the many free online translation services? Our answer to this, is that the free online translation versions cannot categorically translate a web page into meaningful and coherent language for the end user. Also many of the online translation sites do not fully translate the entire page, leaving either the navigation or other areas of the site untouched. Specifically with McCloy Legal, who deal with overseas clients on a regular basis, the translation had to be exactly correct to ensure the message was being understood. We worked closely with a professional translation company who provided accurate and concise translations for ever aspect of the website. Once the translated content had been entered it was then tweaked and corrected to ensure it was also visually appealing to an end user, this included the navigation menu and some content pages that had become too long when translated from the original English version.
Having experienced both free online translation services and our recent experince with a human translator, we would highly recommend using human translators. Not only are they experienced themselves, but are able to add the nuances of the foregin language that an automated translator would fail to provide.
Do you require a multi lingual website?
Do you wish to reach a broader worldwide audience by providing you content in various languages?
If so then please contact us and we can help your website speak to the world.