| Translation is not just substituting words in a foreign | | | | original. It perfectly fits in the context of another culture |
| language for English ones and vice versa. If it were so, | | | | as well. Traditions, habits, customs, rules of etiquette, |
| machine translation won't be such a nonsense. | | | | moral principles, even stereotypes and superstitions of |
| When a business goes global, being properly | | | | the target audience may differ from yours - and this |
| understood in other languages becomes crucial. | | | | DOES matter if you are going to convey some |
| There is another aspect as well. If the translator | | | | message to these people or to communicate with |
| doesn't take into account peculiarities of the particular | | | | them. The process of adjusting your website to the |
| culture, a web resource for this audience is doomed to | | | | requirements of the audience with other mentality is |
| failure. Wrong (for this culture) approaches to the | | | | called "localization". |
| addressee, negative (in this culture) associations can | | | | Website localization is a complex process which |
| ruin all the entrepreneur's ambitions for doing business | | | | needs both technical skills and linguistic/cultural |
| in this country. | | | | knowledge. The aim is to make a website look natural |
| When writing some text, say, Web content or a | | | | for the target audience and be user-friendly. The |
| document, you keep in mind WHO you are writing for - | | | | visitors shouldn't waste time guessing how to, say, |
| and you are quite right. Your goal is to inform, to | | | | type a date or a phone number into a form (such |
| appeal, to persuade, to prove... It remains the same | | | | things vary in different countries). It is likely that in the |
| when you are addressing a foreign audience. The | | | | target language words are longer than in English - |
| difference is that sometimes you should use different | | | | allow more chars to be typed into the fields. |
| means to achieve this goal. | | | | If you are launching a website in a foreign language, |
| In poor translation (and word-to-word translation is | | | | the changes you have to make depend on the |
| always poor) the means typical for one language and | | | | differences between two cultures - the target culture |
| culture are mechanically transferred to another one - in | | | | and your own. Sometimes a good translation is |
| a naïve hope that they will work the same. Well, | | | | enough, but it's not always the case. Be ready for |
| they won't. | | | | changes -- you might need to make new photos and |
| To translate a text means to re-create it -- by means | | | | illustrations, redo the graphics and even alter the whole |
| of another language. If translated well, the text seems | | | | style of your website if necessary. |
| to be originally written in this language; it conveys the | | | | Even such a work takes time and effort, it will pay in |
| same thoughts and evokes the same feelings as the | | | | future. |