High Caliber Design

The trend for websites to have multiple language translations has significantly increased in the past few years, so much so that it is almost a must amongst large websites and even becoming so for smaller ones. But why has this happened in the past few years when the internet has spanned the globe for over a decade, and why has this move to multi-language been particularly prevalent amongst European websites?

There have been two contributing factors to this; the development of internet users and markets and the development of internet technologies.

While the internet and websites have been readily available to companies and users in the western world for many years now, this has not been the case in many other countries. It has only been in the last few years that easier and less censored access to the internet has been available to the ordinary people in many countries around the world which are now major internet users. This has resulted in the development of a much larger non-English speaking audience, and while English remains the predominant language of the net, these audiences are too large for companies to ignore and they require their sites to be translated into these audiences’ languages.

There has also been a significant development in translation tools available to websites. Although these translations still fall short of human translations, and many companies still use human translators for their sites, none the less computer translation tools are significantly more advanced than only a few years ago. This has meant that most articles on a website can be translated into almost any language well enough for native speakers to understand the content. This development has not been accidental. Companies such have Google have invested heavily in translation tools not only to cater for this market but also to develop it. Because of this, Google places significant value on sites that have multi language above those that do not, leading to multi-language conversion becoming a key and common tool used by SEO developers.

European Development

The push towards multi-language conversion of websites has been particularly rapid amongst European websites for several reasons. Firstly, the European market is significantly more integrated and covering more countries with more languages than any other demographic in the world currently. Whereas in the US, China, Japan and India websites predominantly cater for a domestic audience, a much larger proportion of European companies operate throughout Europe. This was the case before the internet, being one of the objectives of the EU, but the internet has only enhanced this further, and in the last few years European websites have increasingly operated cross-border. Due to the large number of languages this European market covers, compared to English and Spanish that will satisfy most US domestic websites, computer multi-language conversions are the only realistic option, and now they are suitably accurate, their demand has significantly risen.

It is also the case that many European languages are spoken in many other parts of the world outside Europe for historic reasons, and conversion of a website to multiple European languages can significantly increase the use of a website globally. This is something that European countries have perhaps cottoned onto more quickly than others.

The final factor is that the European home market is facing significant competition from emerging countries. While the US has a significant home market that seems set to remain for some time to come, countries within Europe have conducted business on a cross border basis for a long time due to relatively smaller home markets in each nation. This places countries within Europe more open to competition, and with the development of China and India as major economic powers with vast domestic consumer bases, European businesses have no choice but to make their websites suitable to these markets, and multi-language conversion is a key part of achieving this.