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When To Translate and When Not To Translate
Written for NoCreditCard.com by Marco and Mike from Porn-Translations.com
It's an old trick. And yes, we're guilty too.
There you are, sitting at the bar getting more and more drunk. You're too sloshed to communicate clearly in English, so you pretend you're foreign. It works! The Hotness to your right - the ice queen - melts. Why? Because she's never met anyone from "Vrkslikistan" before - never! "'VAK-ER-STEEN!' she squeals! That's soooo interesting!" She wants to talk all night, to teach you how we speak, you know AMERICAN, to show you her world!
This is perhaps the only time being unclear helps you get what you want. In every other case you just confuse people and they leave.
In this month's issue of the Worldwide Webmaster we take on translation, in English, of course. Here is Webster's Dictionary definition of translation:
trans-la-tion (noun): the process of forming a protein molecule at a ribosomal site of protein synthesis from information contained in messenger RNA.
Really, that's the definition. And if English is not your first language, you might think that's the correct definition. Of course, the commonly used definition of translation is entirely different:
trans-la-tion (noun): a rendering from one language into another.
Translating to be clearly understood is always a good idea, but not always a wise investment. Throughout this article we will clearly explain when you should translate your site, and when you should not. Here is a three-step test for determining the return on investment you can expect from translation.
STEP ONE: Check the Browser Language
Check the browser languages in your traffic statistics to understand how your customers prefer to communicate. If the majority of your end-users are English speaking. No surprise. But if 13.42% of your end-users prefer to surf the Web in Chinese, 10.50% in Spanish, and 5.93% in German does that mean that you should immediately translate all your websites into Chinese, Spanish and German? NOOO!!!
Why not?
…Because of billing.
Huh?
What does billing have to do with translating your websites?
The answer: Everything!
Let's try an example. If you are like the average adult webmaster in the stats above, 13.42% of your end-users come from China. Can you bill them for accessing your content? At present, the answer is "No." Since you cannot bill this traffic, there would be no immediate return on your investment in Chinese translation. There may be other strategic, long-term reasons for translating into Chinese, but you will not make your money back in the short term.
Here is another common translation situation. Checking your stats you see that over 10% of your end-users set their browser language to "es-mx" (Mexican Spanish). 10% of the chicos hanging around your site are Mexican? …Maybe. But there is a high probability that they are among the 40 million Mexicans living in the U.S. Browser language calls them Mexicans, which is correct. Your billing processor calls them Americans, which is also correct. This leads us to step two.
STEP TWO: Check the ''Bill-ability'' of the Traffic
As we have just seen, it is not only important to know what language your end-users prefer when surfing your site, but also whether you can actually bill them. Combine the browser language test with an IP check to discover the "bill-ability" of your foreign traffic.
Let's revisit your "zh" (Chinese) speaking traffic for a moment. If IP detection reveals that your Chinese traffic is actually coming from China, you might not want to translate your sites into Chinese, as (at present) you cannot convert this traffic into cash. However, perhaps in your case, IP detection shows that your "zh" speaking traffic are Chinese speakers living in the U.S. and Canada. In this case, you can bill. Translating into Chinese may be the right decision.
STEP THREE: Check the Languages of Your Billing Company
Lets take another look at your Chinese traffic. Your browser language and IP statistics show heavy Chinese language U.S. and Canadian traffic. They are billable so you translate. You get even more Chinese traffic after translating, and you send it all to your join page. But - wait! Your billing processor only offers an English-language join page. Conversions go nowhere.
It's a common translation mistake. After investing in high quality complete translation (promotion, tour, members area, etc.) this high-quality traffic goes straight to an English-language join page. The problem is your billing provider. The answer is to integrate your translated pages into the translated join pages of your current billing provider. Find an additional billing company if your current provider does not offer multi-language join pages.
International billing providers, for example Nocreditcard.com, translate their billing pages into all major languages. You can easily customize Nocreditcard.com's translated billing solutions to match your sites' look and feel. They also offer a complete array of marketing tools covering all niches, and of course, translated into all major languages. Simply link directly to this promo material in cases where you have not translated your site. It's essential to use translated billing pages to maximize conversion.
Conclusion
Use your traffic statistics to determine if you have significant amounts of foreign language, billable traffic, before translating your sites into the standard languages (Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Japanese). Choosing the right languages in which to translate depends on your particular traffic mix. Use the three steps above to make wise investments, and watch your return on non-English speaking traffic grow. And even after smart translation investments make you much richer, you can still pull out the old "Vrkslikistan" move.
Key Statitstics and Figures:
By the year 2005 the majority of the world's surfers will be non-English speaking
By the year 2005 there will be more people connected to the Internet in Europe than in the United States.
Visit NoCreditCard.com today for more information on programs and services offered to webmasters around the globe.
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