04 Nov How to translate a website with connectors: what they are and why you should use them
Website translation has become an indispensable necessity in a globalised world, but also a complex operation that requires the synergy and collaboration of several teams with a common goal. What if there was a way to automate and speed up the process, reducing the possibility of human error? In this post, we’ll learn about connectors and how they can help you to save time translating your website.
After weighing the pros and cons, you’ve finally made the decision of decisions to expand your markets and launch your site in multiple languages.
First of all, congratulations! Translating and localising your website will be a great experience which, in addition to allowing you to further expand your business, will reveal your company’s strengths and any areas to continue working on.
While even the uninitiated will undoubtedly realise the difficulty in adapting a website, product, or service into another language and culture (and thus the need to always rely on communication professionals to ensure excellent results), there are actually many other aspects to consider that are less related to the language component and more to the actual practical process.
One example: once you’ve identified the professional or agency you intend to work with to translate your website, is there a way to send them the files to be translated automatically, without having to export everything with tedious copy and paste tasks and attach them to numerous emails?
Absolutely!
In fact, we want to explain everything about connectors in this new article, an essential and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to automate the process of assigning files to the professionals who will be translating your site.
What is a connector?
If you’ve never heard of connectors for translating a website, fear not: we’ll start with the basics!
In the context of website translation and localisation, connectors are all the tools by which the site content to be translated can be automatically extracted and sent to the language service provider, quickly and while maintaining the original formatting.
Connectors thereby speed up the data extraction and delivery process, eliminating a whole series of intermediate steps and reducing the likelihood of human error.
How do they simplify translation management?
Imagine this scenario: after much research, you’ve finally found the right professionals to translate your website (us at Creative Words, of course!). The contract has been signed, the quote accepted: in short, your communication professionals are ready to localise your content and enable you to expand your markets.
Now they’re waiting for your content!
In a traditional scenario, you would open Word or your CMS editor, and after having prepared the various documents and content (probably by copying and pasting everything), you would send them as attachments via email. Once the translations are ready, you would then receive them in the same way: documents, of course without formatting, which you would have to see to publishing and formatting again.
Does this sound like a tedious process? Imagine having to repeat this for every single page, and more importantly, for every single language in which you intend to localise your site!
This is precisely where connectors come in, thanks to which you can literally eliminate and skip many of the steps that are normally anticipated .
Indeed, connectors not only automatically extract the text to be translated, but also send it to the professional or translation agency, thus avoiding wasting valuable time between downloads, attachments, emails, copy and paste, and so on.
Similarly, once the localised version is ready, you won’t have to wait to receive and download the attachments via email and upload them manually; you’ll instead find everything on your CMS and can immediately publish the translation… almost as if by magic.
Thanks to connectors, therefore, the process of translating a website becomes much easier and smoother.
What are the advantages of using connectors?
As you may have already guessed, connectors prove to be excellent allies in the process of translating a website, greatly helping both the site operator and the professionals chosen for localisation.
But in practice, what are the concrete benefits of this useful tool?
- Maximum security: forget about data breaches, compromised passwords, and third parties reading your emails (and data): connectors have high security standards and ensure that no one other than those directly involved can access the content being exchanged.
- Scalability: if you are going big and plan to translate a website to multiple markets at once, connectors will really be a lifesaver. In fact, using the manual method, you would have to submit and then manually upload every single page in every single language! With connectors, on the other hand, you can always decide to add new languages and implement them without much difficulty.
- Say goodbye to human error: if you have to manually submit dozens or hundreds of web pages, more or less serious errors can certainly happen, perhaps unintentionally excluding portions of text. Thanks to connectors, you’ll always be sure to send – and receive – all the material you need, without missing a single word or paragraph.
What are the most common connectors?
Now that we’ve delved into the benefits of connectors, you’re probably wondering what the most common connectors are for translating websites.
In most cases, all you need to do is download a plug-in to your CMS to quickly connect it with the translation management system (TMS) used by the professional.
Where this is not possible, you can opt for a hot folder solution, that is, uploading the content to be translated to a drive platform, from which it will be automatically forwarded to the language service provider.
In short, whatever your situation and needs, installing and using your connectors will be a breeze!
Conclusions
Although connectors can certainly prove to be an advantageous choice for saving time and resources in translating a website, it remains essential to rely on communication professionals who know how to make the most of their potential and are able to offer content perfectly suited to the target market.
At Creative Words, we deal with communication from A to Z: we work daily in the fields of translation and interpretation, localisation, subtitling and more. If you‘d like to find out how we can help you expand your business abroad, fill out the contact form and request a free, no-obligation consultation!
