Translating Your Website – Tips on Going Multi-Lingual

I was involved in multi-lingual web development at Last.fm and on occasion am involved in such projects through my work on the team at Stink Digital.  Both experiences represent very different problems, from translating a 15,000 word web site into 10 different languages, western and eastern, whilst the other providing a need to translate for both HTML and Flash.  So what do you need and how do you go about getting your site translated?

Here are a few guides and tips for making the project as seamless as possible for you, your development team and your raft of translators and proof-readers:

• Locale -The BIGGEST point of confusion, even on a small development team can be choosing your locale format.  Locales are an ISO standard but everybody seems to have their own format whether country first and then language or vice versa, whether with hyphens or underscores, or even varying capitalisation.  Simply choose one, then stick to it.
• Character Encoding – Make sure that you are using UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoding type so that your documents can handle all of the required characters for your languages.  The same will be required in your database and you will want to make sure your PHP, or other code, is set up to handle the right encoding so that you don’t jumble the text as you process it.
• Use Standards – Rather than re-inventing the wheel, use an XML translation standard such as TMX, this means that you can use the same files across the board, whether in Flash, PHP, JS or even in the translation and proofing software.  Seamless integration goes a long way.
• Correct Assets – When working with fonts in Flash or using JS font replacement, you need to ensure that the fonts you are using include the right character sets.  Fonts with both eastern and eastern character sets will obviously be MUCH larger in size.
• Use Foreign Text Early – It’s super easy to develop a design that looks absolutely incredible in one language and hits the nail on the head, but taking that design and making it fluid enough to work with multiple languages is much harder, therefore take the opportunity to introduce foreign language into the design mix as soon as possible.
• Translation Logic – Languages like Polish can have multiple versions of words for plurals dependent upon the number of items in the plural clause, therefore you will need to code with these things in mind, and bare it in mind when developing the design.  Fluid options are a must, and try to avoid making your translators write code, however simple it might seem to you.
• Connecting Content - In the design integrate a language selector, don’t use a language selector as a home/splash page.  Also add META tags that alert Google and other search engine bots to the existence of alternate language copies of the page.
• HTML Code – On top of connecting your content you will want to make sure that all the elements of the page that refer to a locale or language are optimised for that language from the head to the body.
• Multiple Domains - A correct domain, combined with a proper language set up will ensure the right kind of visibility for your site in those foreign language search engines, therefore multiple local domains are the way to go for those interested in SEO-friendly multi-lingual setups.
• Localised Images - To avoid the need for photoshop jobs down the road, and to maximise the benefit of SEO, place as MUCH text as possible in the HTML, and not into images.  CSS can be loaded on a per locale basis, but having to do this saves time and increases site speed.

So there you have it.  A few tips on making life easier for your entire dev, design and translation team.  I hope you find them useful, and feel free to add your 2¢ below.

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