The Web knows no boundaries, but websites - successful ones, at least - always have a strong national flavor. Playing skillfully to their countrymen's tastes, quirks and sense of humor is what makes them successful. Few things are better at making you laugh, or at leaving you totally bewildered, than opening a foreign website in your own language through one of the web-based machine translation programs.
To work, a site must not only be translated properly but localized, that is, adapted to local cultural preferences and ways of expression. What is catchy and a good selling point to the public in one country can seem tacky, or downright insulting, to people in another.
One example from our own practice comes to mind. We were helping a large Russian company go international by creating an English-language version of its website. To make the company seem more approachable, the site carried short profiles of its top managers. One of them said, literally - and this is how nine out of ten translators would, unfortunately, have rendered it - "he is the father of many children and does water sports in his leisure time". The words were not meant to suggest great virility, promiscuity or anything stranger, but simply that the executive was a family man in good enough shape for kayaking. We persuaded the client to drop the sentence from the English version, because even when translated correctly it told Western readers nothing about the qualities they look for in a top manager, and we suggested a line about his business record instead. That project alone supplied many more examples of the kind.
If you want your site to work in another language, hire people who will take the same painstaking care to make it meaningful and free of gaffes. To get started, send us your files through the contact form or simply give us a call. We will provide an accurate estimate for the project and, once you approve it, start working on the Russian translation of your content right away. We will make sure your Russian website says exactly what you intended.
