When marketing products in a new country, software providers spend time on globalization strategies. They discuss internationalizing the products, marketing localization, and sales and go-to-market strategies. However, translating the website to the native language or creating a multilingual website often end up sidelined or neglected.
Website translation is assumed to be a relatively worry-free task, usually bracketed under the marketing team’s responsibilities. Marketing teams might pass on the task internally to other departments or outsource it externally to a third-party website translation service or language service provider (LSP). That entire process often ends up disjointed, with no sharing of key resources such as translation memory or databases of translated documents, ultimately increasing costs and reducing efficiency.
Instead, planning ahead for translation needs, including the website, with discussions on how and what other materials should be localized, opens up a more comprehensive plan. Software providers should take the opportunity to collaborate through shared resources as well as explore automatic translation and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled translation services, which ultimately can save costs and improve end-to-end campaign efficiency.