A business with multilingual customers can appear inauthentic if it fails to communicate clearly. Language becomes a barrier instead of a means to convey business services, or products. In today's digital age, having a website that caters to a multicultural audience can potentially outperform a well-designed website that lacks inclusivity or adaptability. Fortunately, there are now tools created for website translation to build multilingual websites.
Why Is Website Translation Important?
Website translation makes online companies accessible and understandable to secondary or global audiences. It translates the website from its original language and adapts it into other languages, enabling the audience to engage and understand any organization or business.
Website translation tools can easily replicate the content and translate it into the preferred language of the website visitor. Utilizing these tools can expand your brand reach by targeting multilingual and global markets. It can also grow the existing international customer base to gain more traffic and revenue from global customers.
Listed below are the best website translation tools of 2023 and 2024 to date:
1 MotionPoint
Overview
MotionPoint is the #1 global leader in website translation. They offer concierge-level translation through their managed translation services. They can also support any language in the market to meet the diverse needs of any brand. With their smartly engineered technology, MotionPoint can solve the unique challenges of tech-driven translation that require "Beyond Word Services."
As the inventor and pioneer of server-based proxy translation technology, MotionPoint can localize and maintain content for multilingual websites with little to no involvement from their customers' internal resources. The technology enables the translation between the end-user and the back-end system by swapping out the original website content with its translated equivalent before rendering it to the multilingual end-user. They effortlessly translate while preserving the website's look, feel, and functionality.
However, there's a significant difference between localizing and translating content. Unlike website translation, website localization appeals to the linguistic and cultural preferences of the target customers by considering the context, such as culture, dialect, and flow, to adapt the website for local or regional consumption.
Moreover, the website crawlers of MotionPoint can automatically detect 100% of new website content, including dynamic content, making them the ideal solution for organizations looking to achieve affordable high-quality translation without burdening their internal teams.
MotionPoint can deliver high-quality and accurate website translation services from a content segment in images to tricky dynamic content. This is possible through their platform, beyond word services, and industry expertise, ensuring that content is effectively organized and localized without misalignment.
Features
MP Core
MP Core is one of the three pillars of the MotionPoint platform. It centralizes control of the website translation process through its proxy translation technology. It can automatically assign content for translation, review, and publishing in real-time.
Currently, the MP Core tech stack has two versions: base and premium.
The MP Core Base offers all the essential tools to deploy the proxy technology of MotionPoint, such as automatic language preference detection, a custom style guide, glossary, and QA scripts for alternative calls to action.
Meanwhile, the MP Core Premium helps you keep full visibility and control over your translations with additional website translation tools. Some examples include LiveEdit, which allows users to edit multilingual content live and provide translators with immediate feedback, and Global Sitemap for search engines to find and recognize alternate languages available and their URLs.
Adaptive TranslationTM
Adaptive TranslationTM is AI, algorithmic translation, and translation memory working together to deliver human-quality translations at a fraction of the cost. As MotionPoint detects new content from a website, they automatically send off the content for adaptive translation.
The first step in the process involves leveraging the translation memory for words and phrases that have been translated before. This enables instant, automatic website translation while preserving brand voice. Then, algorithmic translation identifies patterns or repeated terms in your content and translates them instantly.
Lastly, MotionPoint uses AI translation to consistently and accurately represent your brand voice and further refine the efficiency of the website translation process. The platform is capable of using both Generic and Brand Adaptive NMTs for more flexibility.
It's a fast, scalable and automated translation process that gets better and more cost-effective over time.
Beyond Word Services
Industry experts within MotionPoint deliver Beyond Word Services. It allows MotionPoint to do more than just provide website translations. With 24/7 customer support and quality assurance, this feature ensures that all concerns are addressed, and content is effectively localized, even the most challenging content segments like text within images can be translated. Moreover, they provide a dedicated customer success representative to manage every aspect of the translation project.
Besides website content, companies can also leverage MotionPoint for software localization. The platform localizes into the customer's preferred language any user interface from mobile apps, product information management, and marketing automation software, proving MotionPoint to be the all-in-one solution for all kinds of website translation.
With the versatile applications of their platform, MotionPoint has offered several solutions to the retail/e-commerce, financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors. Within 60 days or less, organizations are guaranteed to receive a fully translated website with the best translation quality, site functionality, and complementary white-glove service from MotionPoint.
MotionPoint is highly trusted for their managed translation services. Organizations can leverage their concierge-level website localization platform with dedicated customer support and industry expertise to deliver faster and scalable multilingual websites with high translation accuracy.
Alternatively, if you're looking for a budget friendly approach to pilot website translation... For a limited time only, MotionPoint is offering a free trial of MP Lite for 14-days, a similar browser-based proxy solution to WeGlot. Try it now for free!
2 Weglot
Overview
Weglot is an easy-to-use website translation tool. It combines the power of machine translation with manual post-editing and professional translations to give end-users their preferred translation quality. It is a browser-based proxy and not a server based proxy like MotionPoint's, it is compatible with any CMS, but works best with WordPress, it can integrate to your CMS within minutes.
Translations made by Weglot are not limited to website content alone. Users can also translate SEO metadata and media files in the management dashboard of the platform. Translated pages are automatically indexed on Google, following some of the multilingual SEO practices that are necessary without code requirements from the user.
Features
There's no need to waste time on manual website translations. Weglot automatically detects new content and translates it instantly however dynamic content is not always easily translated. It can also boost the process through its first layer of machine translation, provided by leading brands Microsoft, DeepL, and Google.
Weglot also offers auto-redirection for site visitors. This website translation tool automatically displays pages according to the language of the audience as per their browser settings. Moreover, it contains a glossary where users can define and add terms or phrases to keep the translations in line and consistent with the branding of the business.
In addition, Weglot also offers visual translation editing, which enables direct editing of content inside the website design and structure. Users can directly see the outlook of the website page once translations are made.
The translation quality of Weglot depends on the user, as it allows collaboration for multiple editing. While there's no way to determine its accuracy unless assisted by a professional translator, one can still rely on Weglot for its ease of use and straightforward solution as a website translation tool.
3 Transifex
Overview
Transifex enables companies to make a difference on a global scale through its localization and translation management platform. It allows collaboration among multiple users through its online editor and enables integration with the computer-assisted translation tool of the user's preference.
Since its founding in 2009, it has shaped the localization industry, having assisted brands like Atlassian, Meetup, and Waze in delivering multilingual experiences to their users. Through website localization and translation, businesses can expand their market and acquire new users. Transifex enables this expansion and acquisition through its features.
Features
Transifex can support over 46 localization file formats, making its solutions ideal for different applications, including mobile apps, videos, games, subtitles, etc. Users can also publish their translations in real-time through the built-in FrameWork Specific software development kit.
The platform also contains workflow management tools and reports, which enable users to streamline the content needed for translation. Users can also configure whether the translations require an additional review after the content is translated by Translation Memory and Machine Translation of Transifex.
Transifex also displays the status of the projects to keep users updated on their progress, as well as the statistics of the translation done by other users through activity reports. Moreover, it can also highlight the errors made in string translations, which may prevent software applications from fully functioning.
Transifex is recommended for localization that's not limited to website content. Unfortunately, it's not free to use, yet it is still worth considering for purchase, given its versatility and the solutions it can offer as a website translation tool.
4 Smartling
Overview
Smartling is an AI-enabled website translation platform created to help global businesses engage with their customers in their native languages across any channel. It generates human-quality translations fast at a lower cost. Multiple sectors have used it, including aviation, government institutions, automation, media, etc. The platform can translate over 450 languages and locales, empowering companies to create multilingual websites, communications, and apps for their global market.
Features
While it can deliver automated translations, Smartling configures and reviews every translation across all content types. Users can assign content to translation workflows, monitor the progress and costs, and optimize linguistic resources to make sure the web translations are accurate.
The platform displays an overview of translation projects, allowing tracking of progress for on-time completion. It also automates project tasks based on predetermined conditions, making it easier to request translations. Users can also program quality check options to achieve consistency in the content, eliminating errors in spelling and even mistranslations, which can lead to poor user experience.
Smartling also allows integration with content management systems, requiring no code to build the pages of the translated website. Companies can leverage Smartling for its automation and the configurations it allows to achieve high-quality translations. The platform is easy to use yet requires payment for usage.
5 Crowdin
Overview
Crowdin is a cloud-based platform for localizing apps, software, websites, games, and other programs to create a native experience for a global audience. It can support 100 file formats and can integrate with different databases. It also enables collaboration, allowing users to hire an agency or employ their translators to work on the project directly. It is easy to use and can display website translation in minutes without writing any code.
Features
Crowdin synchronizes the translated content, enabling access to translators while limiting the publication to the managers. It supports over 40 machine translation engines and offers a real-time preview of content for better context on what's needed in the translation.
To ensure that the website localization matches the accuracy of the native language, Crowdin also offers QA checks, glossaries, and style guides to help users achieve a high-quality translation. It is also easy to distribute or publish the translated content. With one click, the new multilingual pages are submitted directly to the CMS.
Crowdin can translate up to 300+ languages. Users may also add custom languages or their respective dialects native to their regions. The platform also makes indexing localized pages easy by creating customized URLs, including a language indicator for subdirectory. Overall, Crowdin is recommended for collaborative website translations.
Conclusion
Each of these tools for website translation displays a unique set of capabilities to translate digital content for a global audience. While some are more transparent in the level of accuracy, all of them can make websites more accessible to a diverse market. Organizations can leverage these top 5 website translation tools to expand their reach and eventually build their brand internationally.
