Many businesses these days use a well-designed website to inform customers about their products or services, enable purchases to take place, provide support material, and in many cases provide supplementary information in the form of blogs or other interesting articles. Not all businesses require extensive websites, but an increasing number are very reliant on their website to drive traffic in their direction. Businesses that serve a Multilingual market, such as those in countries where there is more than one official Language, where there is a significant migrant community, or which are directed to an overseas market, by necessity require a multilingual website.

Well-designed multilingual websites require close cooperation between the business’ chosen website designer and professional translators for each language into which the website is translated. 

What is a multilingual website?

A multilingual website is just what the term implies. Instead of the website appearing in a single language, there is more than one version of it, in other languages. How many languages it is translated into depends on the perceived market that the website caters to. For example, in the United States, many websites cater primarily to the North American market. Because of the high number of Spanish speakers in the U.S., it makes sense to design the website in both English and Spanish versions, although this depends on how much the Spanish-speaking market matters to that specific business. 

A business that is primarily an international one (e.g. Amazon or Ali Baba) may have a much more multilingual website with a choice of different languages based on an analysis of which languages are most important to that business. Businesses that depend on overseas tourism are good examples of where multilingual website translation services are almost essential. To design a website that is offered only in the language where the travel business is based is making an assumption that all potential visitors are fluent in that language. This is an absurd and short-sighted proposition! Unfortunately, it seems that wherever English is the predominant language, multilingual website translation lags behind countries much more used to translating their own business websites to English.

What are the benefits of a multilingual website?

1. It helps expand a company’s global presence

When a business intends to expand its global presence, it will soon be confronted with the fact that most potential customers will not necessarily be comfortable with, or interested in, wading through a website that is in a foreign language to them. It might work for a South American company that is only intending to serve the South American market with the exception of Brazil, everyone understands Spanish. But this wouldn’t work for a Japanese or Korean company that intends to sell goods to Europe!

2. It can reach a wider audience

The upshot of a more global reach to a company’s business interests is that the size of the market is immediately made a lot larger. More languages mean more people and hopefully, as long as the messages are culturally attuned and professionally translated (not Google Translated!), this should translate into higher sales volumes and ultimately greater profits.

3. It will increase client satisfaction 

Research consistently shows that people who browse the Internet prefer to browse sites that are in their own language. Maybe it’s because modern consumers have a shorter attention span, or it is just a lot easier to read, but any website that offers a version in the language of the potential foreign clients will increase their satisfaction.

4. It should lead to a higher sales volume and profits 

Greater penetration of the global market, made possible with the help of professionally translated multilingual websites should ultimately lead to a growth in sales and therefore profits. 

Conclusion

If you are in charge of marketing for your company and intend to translate your website into one or more languages other than your own, ensure you choose a professional website translation service to help you.

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