It is suggested that the only way to do business successfully in other cultures is to adapt to those cultures. The phrase “think globally and act locally” perfectly describes this approach. The main step an online business takes to reach potential customers in other countries is to provide local language versions of its website. This means that you will need to translate the e-commerce website into another dialect or regional language. According to research, customers are much more likely to buy products and services from websites in their own languages. Only about 400 million of the 6 billion people in the world learned English as their mother tongue.
The researchers also analyze that only fifty percent of the content available on the Internet is in English and more than half of current Internet users do not read English. International Data Corporation predicts that by 2010, more than 80 percent of Internet users will be outside the United States, and 65 percent of e-commerce transactions will involve at least one party located outside of the United States.
Even many languages require separate dialects and multiple translations. For example, the Spanish languages spoken in Mexico, Spain, and Latin America have different dialects. Therefore, it is important to check and translate the differences between the spelling and the meaning of words. Usually many companies translate the pages of their website. As the web business grows, they become more selective in their translation efforts. Some e-commerce websites have thousands of web pages with a lot of specific content; Web companies operating such sites may find that the cost of translating all the pages is expensive.
The decision to translate a specific web page should be made by the corporate department responsible for the content of each page. Remember that the home page of an e-commerce website must have versions in all supported dialects and languages. E-commerce website pages designed for product information, marketing, and branding should be given a high priority for translation.
Different approaches to translating the different types of text that appear on an e-commerce site may be appropriate. For key advertising messages, the touch of a human translator can be crucial in capturing subtle meanings. For more routine transaction processing tasks, machine translation software can be a successful alternative. Many of the companies in this field are working to improve software and databases of previously translated material that can help human translators work more accurately and efficiently. Manufacturers of translation software and services that work with e-commerce sites do not often use the term “translation” to describe what they do.