Introduction

Traditional translation agencies do not have ability to keep pace with the unique demands of website translation. Their sluggish translation deliveries can create subpar online experiences, which lead to:

• Confusing, alienating UX
• High bounce rates
• Risk to your brand

Companies can mitigate these challenges by working with digital-first agencies that prioritize fast delivery of authentic translations, both at launch and ongoing. Read on to learn more.

Unacceptably Slow Turnaround Times

Your global customers demand perfect user experiences, something legacy translation agencies cannot provide due to slow translation turnaround times. The result is a strange, confusing user experience where untranslated content appears throughout the localized site:

This “mixed language” experience often pervades websites managed by traditional translation agencies. They don’t have the technologies to detect translatable content, or efficient automated workflows to expedite the translation process.

This becomes especially apparent during the ongoing operation of a localized site. Even the most trivial daily updates can remain undetected and untranslated for days, even weeks.

Delays in translation create confusing user experiences, where untranslated content appears throughout the localized site.

If you use a traditional agency for website translation, this process may sound familiar:

• Delays in production as your marketing and IT teams identify and extract new content for translation
• Often waiting two to three weeks for the translation agency to complete the translations
• More time spent vetting and revising the translated content for accuracy and brand voice
• Even further delays as your marketing and IT teams wade through workloads to finally integrate and publish the localized content
• This process is repeated on an ongoing basis as your site is continually refreshed with new or updated content

This slow pace is absurd and unacceptable for website translation.

Ideally, new or updated content—regardless of medium, such as text, images, interactive applications, etc.—should be identified for translation, translated, edited, QA’d and published in about one business day.

That’s a turnaround that keeps pace with your online business. No legacy agency can reliably deliver website translations within that timeframe.

To remain relevant, new translated content should appear on your site within one business day, not weeks.

Larger Workloads Demand Even Longer Timelines

These translation delays are even more problematic and dangerous when you have a large website translation project, such as launching a new section of your site, or launching a localized site for a new global market. In these instances, speed-to-market is imperative. Here’s why:

First-mover advantage: If you get in-market before competitors with a superb localized user experience, you generate opportunities to increase brand recognition and generate leads.

Fast response to competition: Even if your competitors aim to get in-market quickly, it’s still possible for your company to match their speed to market, or even beat them there—if you use a solution that can launch your localized site in as little as 30 days.

Achieving business goals: The faster you get in-market, the sooner you start bringing in new customers, increasing profits and hitting other growth goals.

Avoiding cost overruns: Many vendors can’t handle translating a website in an efficient or expedient manner. This creates delays and other complications that keep you out of the market longer, costing you vital growth opportunities, and running up costs.

Unfortunately, traditional translation agencies aren’t built for speed—either for website launches, or ongoing operation. They simply aren’t equipped or trained to handle the technical and operational complexity. You’ll experience pokey translation turnarounds due to:

• Unacceptably long project timelines
• Complications arising from poorly planned project scopes
• Lengthy vendor meetings that slow the project to a crawl

And your internal teams, who must assist your legacy agency with the project, can become easily overwhelmed in the face of such multi-step, complex projects. They often get bogged down and can’t handle the workload in addition to their existing tasks.

As you and your agency juggle the work, your project may drag on for a year or more.

Traditional translation agencies aren’t built for speed—either for website launches, or ongoing operation.

However, other options exist to get you in-market, rapidly. As you research agencies, consider whether they can offer:

• Superior speed to market, launching your multilingual site in as little as 30 days
• Thorough content-parsing technology to ensure all translatable content, in all media, is detected for translation before the project begins
• Intelligent change-detection technology that spots and automatically queues new content for translation on an ongoing basis
• Reliable translation deliveries of about one business day
• Once-and-for-all translations that eliminate repeated translation of frequently used phrases, saving time and money

Conclusion

When it comes to your online business in global markets, the translation solution you choose can make or break the customer experience, which makes a tangible impact on your ROI goals.

Are you willing to risk bottom-line growth in global markets by waiting weeks or even months to get vital content translated for your multilingual sites?

Remember, the best translation solutions can launch your localized sites in as little as 30 days, and deliver translations for fresh content in about one business day.