10 Oct /12

How To: Website Localisation

website localisation

A successfully localised website is one that is accessible,

usable and culturally suitable to a target audience.

Website localisation is a multi-layered process and requires

marketing, programming, SEO, cultural and linguistic expertise.


Local market/markets research

  • determining the markets and target audiences
  • analysis of the markets’ socio-cultural, political and legal specifications
  • analysis of the markets’ linguistic specifications
  • local- and company-specific glossary analysis

Website localisation analysis

  • pre-localisation analysis of the source code and file formats
  • identifying the areas which need localising
  • degree of readiness for localisation
  • project engineering requirements specification
  • project management analysis
  • scheduling

SEO localisation plan

  • keyword research and competition (global and local search volumes)
  • localisation of identified keywords
  • additional keywords suggestions
  • keyword mapping
  • landing pages mapping

Content management system and character encoding standard analysis

  • CMS features and specifications
  • CMS languages support
  • character encoding standards (Unicode for all language versions or a specific standard for each different language version)

Pre-localisation process

  • style guide
  • Cascading Style Sheets and website template
  • glossary development and translation memory management
  • database content translation
  • translation of content management system exports

Identifying the corporate branding strategy for each different market

  • brand and corporate identity on target markets
  • whether or not company’s slogan, logo’s text, mission and tagline are going to be localised or kept into the source language

Translation of textual website content

Text content translation performed with optimisation in mind, translating the text content based on the predefined keywords and keyword phrases.

  • consider language variants (e.g. French language for target audience Canada or Belgium)
  • consider the style of the language that reflects the target audience’s culture and society (e.g. status, age; example: posh English v/s street English)
  • regional linguistic specifics:
    • vocabulary, grammar, punctuation
    • slangs, metaphors, idioms, abbreviations
    • date, time, currency, phone numbers, metric systems’ formats
    • use market specific examples: keep it relevant for your audience.

Pictures, interactive content and colors localisation

  • textual and cultural localisation of graphic content (mages carry many subtle cultural messages within them)
  • symbols localisation (icons, bullets, corporate identity symbols)
  • flash, multimedia interactive and audio and video contents localisation
  • colors have different meanings and associations in different parts of the world

Website navigation and layout localisation

  • not all languages are read from left to right, this will affect the positioning of the website’s navigation menus and sidebar contents,
  • language length (some languages appear longer when typed than others)
  • web forms and plug-ins localisation
  • web and social media widgets localisation

On-site optimisation localisation

  • meta tags: title tag and description localisation
  • image alt and titles’ texts localisation
  • anchor text / navigational links text localisation

Localisation testing in the local market/markets

  • linguistic testing
  • layout testing
  • functional testing
  • quality assurance

With an in-house team of IT professionals experienced in web design and scripting, Internet marketing, promotion and search engine optimisation that is backed by an in-house team of multilingual DTP and graphics engineers, translation company EVS Translations is able to offers the highest quality complete website localisation services.