There are twice as many non-English users searching for information on the Internet. Only about twenty percent of the content on the Internet is in another language besides English. However, translating website content into multiple language versions to attract foreign visitors is costly and painfully time-consuming. Trying to maintain updated language versions is a virtual nightmare. 'On-the-fly' website translation like that offered by Google or Babelfish is practically useless as it does not give you a searchable translated version. If you want to be found by people using search engines, your website content must contain the keywords on which they are searching.
There is an important difference between translating websites 'on the fly' and accessing an already translated one. The basic difference is whether the content on the website is searchable or not. Web surfers generally search for information in their language of preference. If you have an English-only website, only visitors searching in English will find you. If your website is not in French, for example, people searching in English will never find your site. The point is if you want non-English visitors to find your site, you must have content that can be indexed in the language of the searcher.
There is already an ocean of content on the Internet, much of it published in one source language. After all, your website is accessible to people all over the world. The problem is how to avoid the hassles of translating the content and maintain the language versions without breaking the budget?
Some large web publishers, mostly the multinational companies that have big budgets, are successfully using multiple language websites to reach global audiences. Some smaller sites publish different language versions, often with only selected pages translated.
Machine translated versions that you can host with your original website, offer a low cost alternative that delivers the keywords to attract more foreign visitors to your website.
Once your foreign keywords are indexed by the major search engines, you have a good chance of being found by visitors searching on those keywords. Without a translated version that has all your keywords indexed by the search engines, there is little chance that your site pops up when someone searches in a different language. Even if the quality of the translation is poor, you will have a much better chance in being found. The important thing is the indexed foreign keywords. If the visitor gets the 'ghist' of the content, this is sufficient to make that important first connection. For those who simply want to be found, machine translation offers a good alternative. A simple method that normalizes the translated content to ensure understandability is available.
How do you get a machine translated or normalized version of your website?
Do not be tempted to use the Google or Babelfish 'on-the-fly' website translation to navigate through your site one page at a time and save each page manually. Before you waste your time trying this, read this article On The Fly Website Translation – Who's Doing It ? Google or Babelfish website translation does not give searchable web pages. Unless your website is only one or two pages don’t even bother trying.
Zai Sarkar is the C.E.O of Universal Solutions Inc.a company that specializes in website translation technology. The company's offers products and services for Adsense with foreign keyword optimization.
Source: www.isnare.com
