How to determine what languages to get translated

[DealerDan]

More and more these days, especially with the UIEGA, it is becoming important for affiliates to target non-US markets, especially markets where English isn't their native language. There are lots of great (manual) translation services out there, but I still see a lot of confusion in regard to what languages to specifically target. Many people have different ideas, and I don't think Google Analytics or other software will help you accurately provide, because while you may get a few people visiting from Italy, you won't know the extent of how well a translated site in Italian would actually do until it is translated and optimized for Italy.

However there is a money-saving "shortcut" to this - at least in theory. I've tested it, and it seems to work well enough in regard to determining what the next language I should target with, and if you're dealing with a bit of a tight budget but would like to target different languages, I think this is an easy, if crude way to do just that.

Everyone knows I am sure that there is sites out there that provide automated translation services. The biggest one for awhile was Babelfish, and now Google Translate, as well as a few other ones.

What I would recommend, is that if you have a site in English that you would want to convert to another language(we'll continue to use Italy as an example), you use one of these translation services to translate all of your articles. You then set up pages for all of those, either on your domain or on another domain completely focused on that one language.

Now - will these translation services provide accurate translations? Not a chance. These are in no way at all a substitute for the real thing, and many of the translations they provide are laughable. However the important thing, especially if you're targeting the search engines, is that they convert your keywords into that language, and you should still get the majority of clicks from search engines as you would with a legitimately translated page. So then you spend time analyzing the stats, seeing how many visitors you get, and from there you can determine whether or not it is financially beneficial to go with a full translation service for that country and website.

It's not a fool-proof plan, but from my experience I've found it works well enough in determining whether or not to target specific markets. I've provided multiple languages on a couple of my sites via that services, and I've seen the traffic figures jump worldwide just based on that, and have a lot better idea of what markets to target, and how to market to them. Not only do you get to see how many visitors you get from Italy, but also an idea of what kind of content they are actually looking for.

[MJ]

May I ask how important it is even?

As a newish affiliate my total network gets several thousand uniques a month and seems to be only about 30% US traffic, don't most Europeans search for poker terms in english anyways?

Sorry for hijack Dan.

[themike537]

Very solid post, I also do this on one of my sites and it's giving me great data for the future if I decide to get it professionally translated.

[DealerDan]

May I ask how important it is even?

As a newish affiliate my total network gets several thousand uniques a month and seems to be only about 30% US traffic, don't most Europeans search for poker terms in english anyways?

Sorry for hijack Dan.

In my experience, within 2 months I've seen visitors from non-US at the very least quadruple. Also the bounce rate for these visitors(when they see the bad translations) isn't even as bad as you'd expect - on sites with all written content I'm still seeing a lot of people visiting, staying and reading a lot of the content. Plus at the very least, if you have it on your domain it's a ton more unique content

[fastpony]

Well thought out post Dan and may I suggest Google Translate as an example free translation service.

[superiorword]

I don't think it's a good idea... Instead of another long post, here is a link to the reply I just posted in PAP:


http://www.pokeraffiliateprograms.co...ranslated.html

[MJ]

How bad are these translations? I spent last night doing a few pages for us - but the argument of alienating visitors worries me - maybe I just put up one sentence at the time explaining that the pages were done in google translation until we find someone to do it for us?

There is just no way in hell I can spend the amount of cash it would take to get my money pages in five languages.

[DealerDan]

It some cases it can be laughably bad, in other cases people can get a general idea of what the article is about, although it will never be easy reading. The main thing is never to consider it an alternative - it's just something you are using to test the waters. Find some sites in another language, then convert them to English to get an idea of it.

Also I'll paste the post I did in PAP in regard to the concern of alienating visitors:

The issue of turning off foreign visitors with the poor translations is obviously a big issue, and I do agree with it, and it is definitely one of the biggest negatives with my idea. Some workarounds have been suggested, and another workaround suggestion would be an actual professionally translated paragraph at the top of each page, explaining to the visitor that this is an automated translation to see how much of an audience there is for that language, so that the webmaster can decide whether or not there is enough of an interest to get it professionally translated. Then provide an e-mail sign-up form for people to put in their e-mail address and get an e-mail when the site has been given a professional translation. That way you get to know there is a strong interest, and have a chance at getting those visitors to return.

You could also set up a "dummy" site with your current content translated under a different domain, then use that to check and analyze the stats and decide for translation, and that way you're not ruining your reputation in regard to those visitors, because when the site IS professionally translated it'll be on a different domain and will be a different site.

I actually think this process will help translators business in the long run. There are a ton of webmasters out there who just have no interest in translating, and I think that is a lot due to budget and the work involved. If they test this out, and then see that they are getting a ton of visitors from Romania or whatever, it'll then encourage them to get professional translations done for that site in that language.

[MJ]

Thanks for replying Dan - it has me thinking about how to best approach this issue.