The fact that companies understand the significance of going multilingual is a healthy sign. However, on the other hand, most of them know very little about the various elements that revolve around it.
For many, going multilingual is translating the content, and adding another language to the drop list, as they assume, translation is all they need to win the regional market.
But we could only wish things were as simple and straightforward. Going multilingual is multidimensional, and doesn’t limit itself to translation. It involves taking care of several other factors that make up for a genuinely multilingual enterprise website with a tangible commercial value.
As a company searching for a multilingual solution for your enterprise website, you must know what to look for before you deploy it.
It will help you understand how broad the term going multilingual is and why you should choose a comprehensive multilingual solution with multiple capabilities, features, and functionalities.
Towards the end, the blog also acquaints you with an end-to-end multilingual solution fulfilling all the technical, linguistic, and commercial needs of an enterprise website.
6 Features, and Functionalities to look for in a Multilingual Solution
1. Whether it is an Exclusive Multilingual Solution
Often, enterprise websites are CMS-based. They are developed out of enterprise CMSs that offer translation or multilingual solutions as a plugin.
As an addon feature, these multilingual solutions don’t prove as useful as an exclusive one does. They limit their capabilities to content translations. Moreover, linguistic accuracy and cultural appropriateness are another concern, as the plugins aren’t exclusively programmed to go multilingual.
So, at the outset, make sure that the solution you choose is a specialized multilingual solution. Of course, selecting an exclusive one demands investment. But the benefits outweigh the investment.
A specialized and dedicated multilingual solution sorts the multilingual form of your enterprise website in many different ways. How – it is something you will see as we proceed.
2. SEO Compliance and Local Search Advantages
SEO is a significant consideration that drives your decision to get a multilingual website solution. A solution that isn’t SEO compliant, and doesn’t result in SEO advantages proves practically useless.
A lot of tools on the market translate, but they aren’t SEO compliant, let alone bringing SEO benefits to the table. Hence, before you make a choice, make sure that the solution works well with SEO.
The SEO feature of a multilingual solution helps keep the local language content and URLs SEO-friendly. It translates metatags and incorporates local search keywords that help you enhance the search engine rankings when it comes to local language searches.
3. Time, Cost and Volume Estimation
This is another critical consideration. Often, and especially in the case of enterprise-level websites, estimating the cost, based on the translation time, and volume involved, proves a challenge. It is because such sites have several pages, and comprises many elements to translate.
A flawed and superficial review of the entire project results in impractical timeline commitments, inaccurate cost estimates, and incorrect volume calculations.
Erring across the estimation of all these factors results in operational hassles, delivery delays, and financial losses for both the parties.
Hence, the multilingual solution provider you choose must provide consultation, and translate your requirement into an accurate cost, time, and volume estimation. It will help you plan the project well.
4. Provision to go Multilingual with Specific Pages (Scalability of Translation)
At times, you need to go multilingual with only a few elements, and not the entire website. In such a situation, a solution that, by default, translates everything on your website doesn’t prove helpful.
You deploy the solution, and it translates each and every element of the website. Such solutions prove costly, as you end up paying for translations you won’t even use. So, while working with them, you have the option of either translating everything or leaving the page as it is.
This approach doesn’t work while delivering a personalized content experience. It is because your users may come across content pieces that appear deliberately translated or translated without giving user experience and contextual relevancy a considerable thought.
In order words, you may term it as scalability of translation. The multilingual solution you select must offer scalability of translation. It should facilitate an option that allows you to choose the part you want to translate, based on your local market, language, and business needs.
5. Translation for Multiple Web Architectures
The capability to translate for multiple web architectures proves useful, especially while dealing with modern-day hybrid websites with complex web architectures.
For instance, some multilingual solutions are cost-effective, but they exclusively support HTML and no other form. This proves a significant limitation while working on translations for hybrid websites that constitute a majority across the virtual cosmos these days.
Hence, before making a choice, or while assessing different types of multilingual solutions, you must look at solutions that support translations for multiple web architectures.
6. Change Management Support and System
Change management support and the system is another essential factor that constitutes the practical utility and sustainability of a multilingual solution.
Websites, especially the ones that belong to eCommerce companies, undergo continual changes and updates. In such a situation, the incapability to incorporate a particular change across all the relevant pages and languages proves challenging if you don’t have change management support.
Again, needless to say, how time-consuming and exhaustive the process of manually implementing contextual changes across thousands of pages proves! So, to avoid these hassles, it is prudent to choose a multilingual solution with comprehensive change management support.
It will help you execute changes across the entire website, whenever necessary, and wherever you require. Subsequently, you will maintain consistent user experience and accuracy of the information throughout the site.
Linguify – One Multilingual Solution with Multiple Capabilities!
Linguify is a multilingual solution that packs several competencies together. Besides linguistic accuracy and cultural appropriateness, it aims to improve your website’s commercial value through an exclusive focus on the SEO aspect. The solution is SEO compliant, and helps promote local search engine rankings with the right placement of local language keywords, and translated metatags.
Alongside, Linguify comes with a comprehensive change management support that simplifies the execution of changes across multiple webpages and languages. So, you stay relieved on the change management front, no matter the number of changes your website undergoes every day.
Linguify offers expertise in over 100 Indian and foreign languages. The solution experts crawl your website to give time, cost, and volume estimate of the entire translation task.
Your search for the best and the most comprehensive multilingual solution ends here! Connect with Linguify’s experts at +91 2022953848, or write in to [email protected] for more information.
Ref. No- LSB03211026
