Keywords in non English languages

what to do?

[skibum]

We've got a small SEO project. They've got sites in German and Japanese as well as English, neither of which anyone I know speaks. Are there any resources on the web that provide insight into non English keywords, and stringing a sentence together that YAHOO! or ODP might accept such that someone searching in the respective language might find it?

[Marcia]

skibum, there's a lot in our European forum about different languages on web sites. I don't know if there are resources around, and I'm not sure I'd trust automated translations, because with them there's no way to get the feel of the local idiom for a language.

It might not be a bad idea to enlist a little assistance from a person who does know the other language, as well as SEO.

[bill]

I agree with Marcia about the online translation tools...do not rely on them...especially for Japanese...and the other languages in Asia.

On a related note I had a look at the results of a US $50K piece of translation software that was supposed to be for translating legal documents back and forth between English and Japanese...It worked pretty good for standard terminology and set phrases, but if you dropped out of leagalese the software had fits. A native speaker would still have to go over the results to tweak the finished product regardless.

[heini]

Hi skibum
I guess there are two issues involved.
>stringing a sentence together that YAHOO! or ODP might accept
Both directories will only accept a site when itīs written in the respective language. A broken or partial translation wonīt do. Itīs humans reviewing it!

>such that someone searching in the respective language might find it
thatīs easier. In theory you just have to include the targeted phrase somewhere on the site. But how to get ranked for that phrase when it occurs isolated somewhere on your pages?

The only real solution as Marcia and Bill pointed out would be to get the site or some pages translated. If you want not just to to rank but to make the site communicate with users youīll certainly need a human translator.

[Eric_Jarvis]

we work in 12 languages...generally I have the keywords and phrases translated separately when the site content is translated...I also liaise regularly with at least one native speaker in each language