Translating and localizing your website is a great step in reaching a global market. But how do you know your translated website works? Multilingual website testing is an important step to make sure that your localized website is in complete working order. Multilingual website testing is a step-by-step review of every detail of your translated website to ensure that it works properly. It is important to test in the right environment to make sure that the multilingual website functions properly.
Websites and computers are smart, smarter than we think. Websites can figure out your preferred language based on your computers and browser settings. Most likely your computer knows your preferred language and your computer “talks” to your browser (Google, Bing, etc.) and tells it what language you like to speak. This is why when searching for a new recipe or looking up movie times, you get the recipe in the language you speak, and movie times in your area. In order to properly test a multilingual website, you need to make sure that the computer you are using to complete the testing is set up with the proper operating system.
For example, when we performed testing on Conwed Plastic’s Spanish site, we performed the testing from a computer with a Spanish operating system. Conwed has a robust Spanish website that is modeled after their original English website. The translation was carefully performed by professional translators and uploaded into their CMS to create the multilingual website. The multilingual website testing was performed after all of the content and images were uploaded to make sure that all of the features and details functioned properly.
Tip! Don’t forget to pay close attention to buttons. English can be a much shorter language than other languages. In fact, Spanish is on average 30% longer than English. You may have a snappy button “Buy Now!” button that may be quite a bit longer once translated. You should spend extra time making sure that the content isn’t truncated or cut off.
Interested in learning more about our translation, interpreting or global marketing services in 200+ languages? Get in touch with us now.