Is translating your site into multiple languages a good strategy?

[superiorword]

Even if you want to use automated translations on your site, you should put a disclaimer above the country flags. Like, "Professional translations coming soon"...or something similar.


Again, if I'm a native speaker of a foreign language and look at the automated translations on a page, I would never visit that site again(unless I'm looking for fun). My mother language is Hindi, and I occasionaly read a poker blog's translation in Hindi(that guy is currently using google translate)...and I laugh my ass off

[Michael Martinez]

That's what we're here for Michael Let us know what you find. ps - Which specific translator plugin are you talking about?

We're using global-translator.

Even if you want to use automated translations on your site, you should put a disclaimer above the country flags. Like, "Professional translations coming soon"...or something similar.

Again, if I'm a native speaker of a foreign language and look at the automated translations on a page, I would never visit that site again(unless I'm looking for fun). My mother language is Hindi, and I occasionaly read a poker blog's translation in Hindi(that guy is currently using google translate)...and I laugh my ass off

I'm no fan of autotranslation myself. I've been able to use it effectively with some hand-tweaking on a very small number of documents.

That said, there are plenty of non-English speakers who write in English for the Web without relying on autotranslators and their copy looks pretty bad. This problem is universal between all language groups.

Disclaiming autotranslation is probably the best thing to do, when you find yourself forced to use it.

[3jokers]

Don't waste your time on autotranslation, just pay for real translation and seo.

[CK]

Superior I am on OPB with this. I have paid for translations and the translator did an awesome job because I had players who spoke french email me with questions about a poker room. So I took that as the copy on the page was accurate enough that they felt asking a question would get the answer they wanted

At the same time I have also used translations from google and I know they are not anywhere near the quality that the guy I have used has produced but they still converted.

I agree with you that someone from that language will probably laugh at the page and leave but I think that depends entirely on what you are targetting. In some cases they wont be reading the page..not really. Another side of it is had I maybe posted fake translations I could have watched which pages did well and those that didnt than moved into hiring a translator. OPB's way saves money in the long run.

[Spry]

not only does OPB's way save money, it also leads to more purchases of professional translated content. If someone buys translation and it doesn't convert, and then they buy more translations and it again doesn't convert, and again it doesn't convert they are likely to quit getting pages translated.

On the other hand, if they know that a piece of auto-translated content converts then it is pretty much a no-brainer to purchase the professional translation.

Let me ask you guys more experienced in auto-translation than yours truly. Do you put this right alongside your other content (on the same site) or do you set it on a different domain during testing?

[321]

Auto-translated content does not convert. It just embarrasses the site that uses it, driving away people.

If you use it to see what converts, you are costing yourself a fortune. if you use it to see if you can attract traffic via search, then that offers a bit of constructive information, but even that is deceptive because search engines make semantic judgements about text, and machine translated pages are semantic gibberish, and will normally be judged closer to random text (spam) than semantically coherent text.

I can't imagine any poker player who cares about his/her money coming to an incoherent page and then following through to do business with that site. So it never makes sense to put auto-generated drivel on a site that you want people to trust.

[Sebastian]

Auto-translated content does not convert

That is a very bold statement. I strongly disagree with it actually. Let's say people are looking for something and your site points them to it. You can have very visible adds that will still get clicks even though your content is crap.

I think the more your traffic is targeted the less influence quality of translation will have. If you go wide with your traffic and have some incomprehensible content then of course conversion will be horrendous.

I do agree that poorly localized content will convert badly in general. But I think that if you are optimizing for something like titan poker bonus in Spanish using an auto-translator you will convert fairly well.

[321]

That is a very bold statement. I strongly disagree with it actually. Let's say people are looking for something and your site points them to it. You can have very visible adds that will still get clicks even though your content is crap.

Have you ever done this yourself? How eager does a person have to be to download malware to click on a link on a page written in gibberish?

We are talking about poker here. Virtually no one will do this, and those that do will be horrible quality players.

You will always be better off by making a graphic of coherent text provided by the cardroom than posting gibberish.

Two sentences of coherent text will do better than four paragraphs of nonsense.

Spammers who use this technique will build hundreds of stand alone sites that are completely gibberish text, not at all the scenario the original poster described.

[Sebastian]

Have you ever done this yourself? .

Yes. My point was that I have personaly used Google translate and verified that the adds on localized pages do get some clicks, sometimes a lot of clicks (from places like Italy). I see what you are saying about the trust factor going down, but when people see an add that looks "official" (ie branded by a poker room) they will still click on it, perhaps less frequently than usual though. If the homepage is in English they should understand that this page was just a poor attempt at translation and nothing malicious imo. Especially if the domain name is in english and it is clear that this is an "international section" from the naviguation. I guess you can make a case for placing the adds on top of the content though.

[321]

Human clicks or bots?

Clicks are not conversions.

My question though is have you ever clicked a link on a gibberish text page with the intent of buying or signing up for something?

Just tried one page:
Translated version of http://www.pokerstars.se/poker/games/rules/hand-rankings/

If anyone wants to play "Sick Indigenous shock poker" (!!), maybe they will click, but again when a much more sensible solution is easily done, why would anyone waste time with gibberish? And again to the point, putting gibberish on a quality domain is a poor idea.