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Regardless of our industry and location, we want to reach customers from all over the world. Thanks to the Internet, we can offer our products and services to customers without any restrictions. However, this requires translating the website so that our offerings are clear to customers who speak different languages. It would seem that now, thanks to Google’s features, you don’t need to use a translator and just use Google Translator or a suitable plugin. However, is this enough?
Google web translation – what options are available?
Currently, Google provides us with two of the most popular options to easily translate our website.
Website in Google Translator – automatic translation of the store page.
This is an option that I’m sure many of us use on a daily basis. Google translator is very easy to use – just paste text into a given window and within a second we have a translation available in virtually every language in the world. Anything can be translated this way, including websites. However, websites translated in this way are often of lower quality than those translated professionally.
Translating pages using browser plug-ins
The second option is to use browser plug-ins. They are mostly free and can help translate all the content quickly once you get to the website in question. Here, too, we have access to multiple languages. To enable page translation, just click on the “Translate” button in the appropriate place, which anyone can handle.
Google Translate and plug-ins – are they good options for site translation?
The short and clear answer is no. While this is a tempting option because it costs us nothing, we can lose a lot through it – both customers and opportunities to sell our services and products. Why won’t Google Translate and its plugins be the best option?
Automatic website translation reduces your level of professionalism and credibility
The content on our website is one of the aspects by which potential customers judge our professionalism. Of course, they expect first and foremost to be substantive and provide answers to their questions. However, linguistic correctness is the minimum that any professional website simply must meet.
Mispronounced words, phrases that sound like they’re pronounced by a foreigner and strange sayings that don’t occur in Polish are all warning signs that a site translation was done by a site translator like Google Translate. They will make the potential customer automatically evaluate our site negatively and not be interested in our services or product.
Automatic translators do not understand context and cultural nuances
Every language, including Polish, has a lot of sayings, idioms and “clusters” of words that even professional web translators have problems with. Many words and names also do not lend themselves to literal translation: after all, we cannot translate Apple’s company name as “apple,” and the Gdansk district of Wrzeszcz cannot be translated as “yell.”
Having Google’s translator tool adjust your site for other languages will result in any typically Polish phrases being mistranslated. Because of this, customers may misunderstand our offerings, and certainly the addresses. In this way, it is also very easy to offend a foreigner – a word translated by an automatic translator in another country may be considered vulgar.
Problems with jargon and industry terminology
Artificial intelligence does not understand industry terminology as well as humans do. This is especially true in the medical industry, but also in other industries that are distinguished by complex and elaborate jargon. Google translator very often translates them too literally or completely incorrectly. Such translation of websites will not only be unprofessional, but can also be dangerous (for example, in the case of information about drugs or treatments).
Another danger worth mentioning here is the topic of managing privacy settings. If they are inadequately translated, the user may be misled and thus have grounds for a claim against our company.
Page translations made by Google Translator are not SEO-compliant
We already know that a page translation done by Google will never be as accurate as one done by a professional translator. However, customers are not the only ones who can judge us on this basis. It will also be done by … Google itself. Due to the inaccurate phrases that would come from Google Translator, the quality of the content on our site drastically decreases, leading to a very low Google search ranking. Sometimes the content becomes completely incomprehensible, the meaning is lost, and the whole thing is considered “low-quality content” by Google.
When translating a page through a translator, we also lose the option of displaying personalized ads, as they will simply no longer sound good, which is sure to turn away a potential customer.
Page translation – why choose a professional translator?
Hiring a professional translator or
marketing agency
, which has copywriters who speak different languages, is a must if you want to attract a foreign client. Translations of the site made by professionals are always prepared with the utmost care and respect for all idioms, sayings and language-specific phrases. This way you guarantee your company the option to display personalized content to customers from all over the world.
In this way, we will satisfy not only customers, but also the Google search engine itself. We will also get better-tailored ads based on the language and its intricacies. The whole thing will give a professional impression that will help us attract new customers.
