Forum Moderators: open
True case story: 16 months ago I created a small site for a friend who owns half of an eight room motel in Fort Lauderdale. There is nothing special or fancy about the site, just some reasonably good basic SEO practise - the little I knew in the spring of last year anyway. The only thing slightly unusual is that the site offers three languages, English, German and Swedish.
I have just reviewed the logs for the first seven months of this year and could scarcely believe my eyes. This little site has 72% of all visitors from search engines. It is pulling in substantial traffic from major engines - AltaVista, Lycos, Google, Yahoo and MSN - for such highly competitive keyword phrases as "Fort Lauderdale", "Florida", "Fort Lauderdale hotels", "Fort Lauderdale apartments" and "Fort Lauderdale motels".
Digging deeper, I found that the traffic came from the German and Swedish versions of the major engines, where the site was showing on page one or two for the best keywords. In Lycos Germany they actually made it to the #2 spot for "Fort Lauderdale". In trying to figure out how in God's name this was possible, I noticed a thing easily overlooked:
The local versions of major engines have the default search set to the local country, but will treat dot-coms as local if they are in the local language. So if the surfers do nothing but type the search phrase into the box and click "search", all dot-coms in English will be filtered away and the little guys from page 800 or so, will have their moment of glory in the limelight. Other facts gathered here at WebmasterWorld strongly suggest that two thirds of all Europeans will behave in this manner.
So, suddenly we have a whole new ball game. A 1000-word page in English can be professionally translated into any language for just $55 if the target language is one of the major ones and just $90 if it is more exotic. This is a cheap solution compared to the $199 now charged for inclusion all over the place without guarantees. Plus: The cheap translation approach gives an excellent chance for high placement, due to much smaller competition for the keywords. Example: Fort Lauderdale on a page in English: 350.000+ hits. The same on a page in Swedish: 425 hits, only a few of which will have good title, description, keywords and other items contained within the definition of "Good SEO practice.".
The little site in my case story does not have separate urls for the language versions. Not a recommended solution, but enough in this case. (How much money can an eight room motel spend on its site, anyway?) The three language versions do have their own 100% frameset index pages with plenty of text and links in the noframes areas. These index pages were the ones submitted to and accepted by local directories, Yahoo's regional directories and ODP regional listings (this is an OK practise with ODP as long as you offer the correct language).
So, I think it is time to re-think strategies in Europe. Don't just target the major languages, go for them all and see your traffic explode. It is probably enough to have a good size starting page in the local language with links to the other pages in English - the favoured number 2 or 3 language for most.
Any more case stories out there? Or bright ideas to add?
That is a very interesting question you are asking. "Two peoples separated by a common language."
May I break it down into components:
a) Will Americans think they are dealing with country yokels or euro trash if the see a page with English spelling and idioms?
b) Will Brits, Irish, Aussies and Kiwis develop a rash if they see the language of Shakespeare profanated?
c) If yes to one or both, are there people available who can handle this - other than expensive professional copywriters?
As far as the English-American thing goes, I think that well written text in either 'dialect' works fine. It just has to be the simple, non-slangy English that is used in the best part of the web (and in this forum, mate!)
I have been experimenting with the Babblefish translator over at altavista. I know that it churns out quite bad translations, but it will work better than nothing in getting my keywords out to more searches. I think that the disclaimer idea of yours is a good one. It all depends on the nature and budget of the site, of course. My plan is to do a babblefish translation of my index page in Spanish and Japanese, with disclaimer, and have all links on the translated sites going via the Babblefish engine. This is not ideal, but there is NO WAY I have time or money to do 3 different versions of the site, one is bad enough, and I don't want to have to get the TWO translators back every time I change one line of text! Hopefully, though, I will pull in more customers this way. This presumes that the index page is full of juicy keywords :)
As far as customer support is concerned, Spanish is no problem, and if anyone does reply in Japanese, I will search for help here to translate it. (wonders, I could just put it through Babblefish again, hmmm...)
I don't want to suggest a lowering of standards with regard to the text of a site, but if the option is a rough translation or nothing, which one wins?
And I thought HTML and browsers were bad.
The European forum allows url drops to own site for this purpose. It is the only forum other than Commercial that doeas this. Keep it very short:
Name or nick at (domain) does translations and SEO in XXX. Mail: YYY
No hype, no commercials. Keep it drab and factual.
Ahem!
Correction: The only forum other than Asia & Pacific and Commercial to allow this.
Dear electro. This message was translated from French into English, by using technology behind Babelfish. You will have to now seek your heart and heart. I then to guarantee that the translation of English-French is not well better. The this manner that you want to present yourselves is in a world unsuspecting?
Elettrotipia beloved. This message has been translate from Italian in English, using the technology behind Babelfish. Hour you will have to try your heart and spirit. I can guarantee that the translation from English to Italian is not much more better. Is this the sense that you desires to introduce itself to a world unsuspecting?
What I would like to know, though, is if the site is a small, highly specalised area(AND there is a disclamer high on the page), will people *understand* that not everyone has the budget and time to translate pages by professional means?
I have 800+ pages in English on the web and they are visited by people from 90+ countries, usually because they search for the name of a place or a person, which would be the same in all languages. I saw somewhere that you can add a button to a page for free and let someone (Altavista or Systransoft) generate the page in other languages. I was sorely tempted, but having seen the results I chickened out. Guess I am not as intrepid as you are.
Btw: Wasn't "Elettrotipia beloved" absolutely incredible? Funniest thing I saw today.
"Ok, so that's the Japanese version for Netscape 3 done, how's the WAP version in Spanish doing?
Oh, its coming along, but we haven't even started the webTV version for partialy sighted French yet" :o
Elettrotipia :) Think i might change my nick to this!
It is possible that they will not understand your web page or what you are trying to sell or achieve. With Japanese you will probably have a pile of rubbish that has no meaning at all.
Let's do a role play reversal using one of my Japanese pages as an example.
I'm a Japanese person who cannot understand English. I really want to expand my business to reach English speaking countries using the web. I used Babelfish to translate Japanese text to English and create a web page.
Below is a Babelfish translation from one of my Japanese pages to English.
The jack Ni class, the jumbo tail promontory, the Kurie web, with the course which roller day the beads, the Okamoto twill child and the flat shoal true bow et cetera the famous professional golfer plays worldwide golf! Without reservation coming to the gold coast, there is no being less crowded in course, without being able to play the people who keep returning to Japan are. If reservation you do with the (to eight weeks ago), desired course, play time, from the Bliss ville airport to welcoming and sending off the gold coast it becomes everything secure, can feel at rest and can play. In addition, does not do golf the person and while you have played, you can enjoy, shopping, sight-seeing who are quantity, ill-smelling it is is. Furthermore the reservation gold it is not with you can reserve altogether.
Do you know what I am trying to sell?
Would you have confidence in dealing with me?
It is obvious that I do not understand your language.
Are you able to communicate in my language?
Answers to these questions will be no and a potential customer is gone.
To be successful with foreign markets a quality translation is required.
> b) Will Brits, Irish, Aussies and Kiwis develop a rash if they see the language of Shakespeare profanated?
Hi rencke
Below is an example of what Aussies have done to the English language.
Stone the flamin' crows mate, that sheila's starkers.
Iīm so with you on this, man
(erm what the heck could that possibly mean????)
starkers is slang for naked or wearing nothing
sheila refers to a female
mate is a friend or even someone you don't know
Stone the flamin' crows is slang for either that's incredible or I don't believe it.
Sorry, if this appears to be off topic but it is a good example of why slang and local expressions should be avoided in websites. Simple, well written, interesting text is easier to understand and translate into other languages.
Yes, of course. You are selling ancient Japanese poetry. Very beautiful too. I particularly liked this passage: "with the course which roller day the beads, the Okamoto twill child and the flat shoal true bow". Nobel Prize stuff!
> Would you have confidence in dealing with me?
Absolutely! People who sell poetry are always honest and hard working.
Re: Aussies. OK, point taken. Aussies are out! Do not translate American pages for Aussies. They can obviously take anything without developing a rash.
Percentage of online language populations June 2001.
English 45%
Japanese 9.8%
Chinese 8.4%
German 6.2%
Spanish 5.4%
Korean 4.7%
French 3.4%
Italian 3.6%
Portuguese 2.5%
Russian 1.9%
found the stats at [glreach.com...] .
Remember that they are "Percentage of online language POPULATIONS" and not "Percentage of online language used on SITES" which I would imagine would be diffrent?
Here's a quick example, take the simple term, "Hello, I am going to the pub for a drink."
London: "Alwight geezer, I'm goin' aat for a pint"
Yorkshire: "Hey'up, I'm goin t'pub"
Luckily I'm fluent in most regioninal variatons of English.
1. English: 29%
2. Chinese: 20% - - - - - - tip toe - - - - - - - > Evening class!
3. Spanish: 8%
4. Japanese: 7%
5. German: 6%
6. Korean: 4%
7. Portuguese: 4%
8. French: 4%
9: Italian: 3%
In Europe, German is already a bigger language than English if you go by mother tongue. Figures for Europe in the new SEO Strategy Primer [webmasterworld.com].
One of my sites is a Directory, and a number of the pages I link to are in languages other than English. I don't speak these languages so I simply spider the site for Title and Description and use these. I am assuming here that they have an appropriate title/description in place, a rash assumption perhaps but at this stage I have little choice.
The interesting thing is that my directory pages end up with a combination of languages. This doesn't seem to harm the english engine positions as the non english content is quite low.
But because Google searches on the whole page text, sometimes searchers using Google partners in non English speaking countries will find me as a result of a description on my page in their language. Follow??
Admittedly in my case this produces transient traffic as they come to my site, find the listing they are looking for and are then gone. But then this is what a directory is all about, getting the user off site to a useful destination quickly.
Now how you apply this to a site where you want the user to stay and buy, that is another question, one to which at this stage I do not have an answer.
Onya
Woz
Will electro, fearing the loss of his life time savings to greedy professional translators, be comforted by Woz' cheapy work-around? Will Gorufo succeed in selling ancient Japanese poetry with the help of Babelfish translations?
Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!
