How to Budget for Chinese Website Translation Projects

When you are planning to launch your website in Chinese, there are several key factors to consider in your website localization strategy. These include tasks that you will need to take, the capability of your CMS (content management system), the tools that your localization partner can provide, etc. In this blog, we will explore these in detail, so you can better prepare for your Simplified Chinese website translation project, and we can also look at how GPI can help you build your budget with our own developed tools.

Basic Tasks to Include in the Chinese Website Translation Project

To start a successful Chinese website translation project, the first thing to do is to define the translation workflow. As a best practice, we recommend these 15 steps to follow:

1. Review & Analysis of Source Files (also known as localization packet)
2. Multilingual Website Workflow Based on CMS
3. Project Kick-Off
4. Subject Matter Training and Research
5. Cultural Correctness Assessment
6. Glossary & Style Guide Development
7. SEO/Keyword Research & Localization
8. Translation, Editing, and Proofreading
9. Localization of all Graphics
10. Localization of Documents
11. Localization of Multimedia
12. Basic Online QA & Testing
13. Launch Language Versions
14. Final Delivery
15. Final Edits and Archiving of Files

Getting Started with your Chinese Website Translation

Now that you have defined the steps to undertake for your Chinese website translation project, the next thing to do is to get prepared. There are many factors to consider in this step, one of the most important factors to consider is for your translation and technology partner to understand your CMS and its capabilities Ideally,  your translation partner can provide a connector which will interface with your CMS so that content can easily be imported and exported. This will establish an automated workflow, which allows efficient collaboration between your engineering team and translation partner. Taking this step into consideration will help save a considerable amount of time, human effort, and cost.

Understanding Source Files and other Requirements

For your Chinese website translation projects, it is important to evaluate the content. Your translation partner will work closely with your website development team to understand the format of the files, discuss the best way to export the files to prepare for translation, and how to import it back to the CMS once the translation is complete.

A qualified translation agency will use Translation Memory (TM), a CMS used to store the content in both source and target languages. When the professional translation team starts the translation, they can utilize the existing translations saved in the TM. There are 2 key benefits of using translation memory: consistency and cost savings. Since previous translations are stored in the TM, should that content in part or whole, be submitted for translation again, the TM will recognize the content and automatically adapt the previous translation to the new content. This ensures quality and consistency by adopting already translated content whether it originally appeared on your website or was submitted as a document translation. By utilizing the repeated/matched segments, you will also be able to save money as this content will be charged at a reduced price.

Last but not least, after the translation is completed and imported back into your CMS, an online quality assurance (online QA) step is essential to ensure that the translated content is displayed correctly on the website. Considering the differences between Chinese characters and English letters, several potential errors may be introduced during the importing of the content and may not be noticed if handled by non-native Chinese speakers, such as wrong line breaks, corrupted characters, incomplete content due to space, etc.

SEO and Keywords Research

It is up to the client’s decision on whether they wish to include SEO steps in their Chinese website translation project. However, it is recommended to include it in the initial stages, so that the content translated will be optimized for marketing purposes in the target market. As many of you may know, Google is not as popular and less accessible in the Chinese market, therefore, when setting up an SEO strategy, you will need to make sure to target the right search engine, in this case is Baidu, and other digital platforms such as Weibo, Weixin, etc.

You are welcome to visit my other blog for more insights about the Chinese social media platforms.

Make Use of the GPI Proprietary Tools

GPI has a team of dedicated developers who are specialized and have extensive experience in building CMS-based website translation connectors for a wide range of CMS tools. The connectors can help simplify content export/import by establishing an automatic workflow. These workflows will make you and your web development team’s life easy by minimizing the manual effort needed to copy and paste the content into an external document, and as a result, minimizing the potential errors introduced during the manual process.

Conclusion

In summary, I hope this blog helps to provide some insights for the preparation of your Chinese website translation plans. GPI has a team of professional website developers, linguists, and project managers with experience in translation services. The team has successfully delivered hundreds of Chinese website translation projects to the most prestigious clients worldwide, helping them create the most appealing content for the Chinese market.