We’re combining our 3 lead web services to help your website launch in international markets with a bang.

All good things come in threes - that’s certainly true when it comes to launching your website in a new language and country. Follow these 3 key steps to start seeing results from your website:

Step 1: Brand Research - find out how suitable your brand or product name is for international markets

Step 2: Keyword Research - investigate what people actually search for to find your product, and use this information to your advantage

Step 3: International Blast - put the results of the research into practice, localise your homepage & contact form, and start generating enquiries, with a method that is usually cheaper and more effective than pay-per-click advertising

However, during February we’re offering these 3 services as a package for £590 - so you get one free when you buy them together.

To kickstart your website in a new language, or test a market you’re intending to target, simply email us, or call +44 (0) 113 8150460.

Once you make the important decision to localise your website for a foreign market, and select a provider to deliver the project, your work is not quite yet done. It’s equally important to identify which sections of the website should be included in the localisation project, not least from a budgetary perspective.

We usually advise clients who are embarking on their first localisation to omit the following sections:

- News

- Meet the team, or equivalent

- All blog posts

The reason being that this type of contact can quickly become out of date, unless a strategy is in place to manage multilingual updates.

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Vogue Italia has been widely criticised for the feature it ran on its blog this Monday, a piece entitled “Slave Earrings” that has since been removed.

The post read: “Jewellery has always flirted with circular shapes, especially for use in making earrings. The most classic models are the slave and creole styles in gold hoops.”

It continued: “If the name brings to the mind the decorative traditions of the women of colour who were brought to the southern United States during the slave trade, the latest interpretation is pure freedom. Colored stones, symbolic pendants and multiple spheres. And the evolution goes on.” (more…)

The arguments for outsourcing any type of work are clear: costs are reduced; efficiency is improved; economies of scale can come into play; and there is usually an application of appropriate technology that would be less likely to take place if the work was kept in-house.

The outsourcing model has also been successful in cutting costs and improving efficiency in the public sector. Council and government tenders have been big business for years, and although cuts have had a dramatic effect on certain sectors such as consultancy, in others there are still opportunities to be had. (more…)

One of the most important questions a project manager can ask when preparing to organise a translation is about the intended audience.  Is the Chinese translation for mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan?  Is the Portuguese translation for Portugal or Brazil?  Is this Spanish translation aimed at Spaniards or Spanish speakers in South and Central American countries?

These variations on one language are more in-depth and important than some people may realise, and as such, it is important that any translation is specifically carried out with the audience country in mind.  This often means translating a text into one language twice, one for one country, and one for another.  However, if a client only wishes to invest in translating text once, yet wants to appeal to both South American and European markets, for example, what can be done?  Should they choose between the two, use the same translation for both markets, or is there another way?  This is where “Neutral Spanish” comes into play.

The idea behind this concept is that vocabulary and terminology be defined early in the process, so that only terms that will be understood in both target audiences are used in the translation, thus ensuring that the final translation is suitable for use in both Spain and South American countries that use Spanish, such as Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina.  The large number of Spanish speakers who reside in Central America may be included in the client’s target market as well, so their variation of the language must also be taken into consideration. (more…)

Translation memory is a type of software that stores a unit or “segment” of a source language together with its translated equivalent in the target language.

This is useful for several reasons. Firstly, it improves the consistency of translated documents, as once a segment of text is stored in the memory, the translator will be prompted to use it wherever it appears in a file. Secondly, where text is repeated in a document, the client does not need to pay for the sentence to be translated twice. Thirdly, it makes the process more efficient, so translations take less time.

Other useful feature common to most types of translation memory software are:

• Ability to analyse many different file types to get a wordcount
• Protection of code in web files such as HTML so that strings are not damaged in the translation process
• Displays all text within a file, so that nothing is missed out of the translation
• Integration with glossaries
• Preservation of file format structure

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New German site launched!

We met Amy Karim at the Internet Retailing Expo in March, where we spoke to her about expanding her online bridal accessories business internationally. She’d already decided to target Germany as a new market, and so our International Blast service was the ideal solution to get her started. (more…)

We decided that our latest acquisition needed a new look, so commissioned a fresh, new design to make the Live Translation site easier to navigate and use. Take a look and let us know what you think!

New features we’ve added include:

• File upload facility
• Streamlined 3-step ordering process
• Real-time Statistics: Average turnaround time; Languages online now; number of translators online; etc

Sign up now for your free account.

Live Translation is “powered by people”, so if you’re a translator looking for more work, please register here.

If you already use Live Translation, tell us why you like it! We’d love to hear your comments.

Don’t forget, you can also follow us on Twitter: @LiveTransLtd

Real-time online translation service Live Translation has a new improvement - you can also now upload files to get a free quote and buy your translation at any time of day or night.

The file upload feature can handle any common document file type: Word, PDF (with selectable text), txt file, Excel…

Your file will be returned to you in your chosen format, usually within just a few hours.

Register for a free account now and we’ll give you the first 50 words for free:

http://w-t.cm/LiveTrans

“Web-Translations offers the full range of services I need for producing our multilingual brochures, email campaigns and website copy, and at a competitive price, so I don’t need to shop around.

The staff are helpful and knowledgeable – our account manager was able to advise me on the best languages to choose for the countries we wanted to target, which was a great help.

All round, the service I get from them is outstanding. I’d definitely recommend Web-Translations.”

Emma Shailer, Head of International Marketing - UCreative (University for the Creative Arts)