Is a Multilingual Website for You

Mark Reichard
iData Technologies

As the dot com boom was going bust in the US, the governments of countries like China, India and Peru were making huge efforts to get their citizens on line.  The move to broadband Internet access has surged ahead in other places. More than 50% of South Koreans, for example, have broadband Internet access. Because these trends, it is estimated that the percentage of Web surfers who are not native English speakers surpassed 50% sometime in 2004.  This shift is causing many with international interests to wonder if they should have their Web sites translated to better serve this emerging demographic. 

A multilingual website is not for everyone.  Building and maintaining a multilingual site requires a commitment of time and resources.  To succeed, a multilingual Web site must be part of a coordinated communications strategy.  Still, a multilingual website can be an excellent tool for taking a global brand to the next level or for creating a relatively low-cost presence in geographical areas that would be cost prohibitive to serve in other ways.  Your answers to the following questions can help to determine whether a multilingual site would make sense for your organization.

Does your domestic client base speak more than one language?  US sites are increasingly providing content in Spanish as well as English.  This has to do with the growing number of Spanish-speakers in the US (at least 11% of the US population) and the fact that that Latinos, even when bi-lingual, overwhelmingly prefer to surf the Web in Spanish.  If a significant portion of your clients or customers speak a non-English language, then the decision to provide multi-lingual content is a fairly easy one.

Is your organization already international?  For organizations doing business globally, a Web presence that reflects their geographic reach can be crucial evidence of their commitment to local markets.  Clients usually expect at a minimum to deal with you in their language, and an English-only website is likely to undermine any efforts that you make to build a strong local presence.  Likewise, organizations with international offices already have a wealth of material translated to the local language and culture that can be used on the web, and they have a pool of resources to validate translations and appropriateness of Web content.

Is English rare in your target markets?  In places like Hong Kong or Sweden, locally relevant Web content in English can be preferable to translated US content because English is so widely understood.  Similarly, speakers of Finnish and Hebrew usually accept reading content in English because the size of their population often does not justify translation.  However, if you serve markets speaking a major language with a substantial or growing number of Internet users and a low percentage of English speakers, a multilingual site makes sense.

Is the Web a good fit for your products and services?  Do you manufacture highly engineered products for which you must provide technical documentation and certifications?  Do your services require lots of explanation?  Do you sell information or software?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, a multilingual Web site could be a key tool to expanding your market penetration and shortening international sales cycles.

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you should seriously consider a multilingual website.  Of course, committing to a multilingual site involves taking on an ongoing maintenance task.  The key is to plan up front and design your multilingual Web effort to minimize this burden.  This design goes beyond technical considerations and includes questions about what content to translate versus generate locally in each market and who will have final responsibility for each language version of the site.  There are tools and techniques for making all aspects of the process easier (see for some examples), but careful planning and clear commitment to the goal are always required.