Don't Lose Your Foreign Web Site Visitors by Insulting Them With Brain-Dead Translation Services

For some internet marketers it's become a cuttingedge strategy to Rosetta Stone offer multi lingual navigation andpromo material on their sites in the hope of expandingtheir client base. While it is true that internationalusers whose mother tongue is anything but English arebeginning to hit the web in hefty numbers, catering tothem in their own linguistic format is an art initself which doesn't lend itself to the cheap and easy"no brainer" pseudo solutions currently being hawkedon the net. If you offer them one of those, chancesare you'll fend them off forever. Count it as awell-meaning blunder as much as you will, fact isthese clients-to-be can be quite relentless if youconvey the impression that you couldn't care lessabout offering first class services. Don't forget thatvery many people actually love their mother tongue anddon't enjoy seeing it massacred.Linguistics and translation are sciences in their ownright demanding due respect or - at the very least -professional handling. One thing the non-expert shouldget rid off - the sooner the better! - is the fondmyth that familiarity with your mother tongue impliesthat you know all about language and its socialramifications. And it's not about lack of command ofa Rosetta Stone Hindi V3 foreign tongue either - more often than not, it'sthe basic concepts which are flawed, such as thebelief that a word-by-word translation, thoughadmittedly not very elegant, will at least give you a"general idea" of the source text's content. Whilethis may actually be true to some extent within thevery limited context of highly specialized technicalfields (academic papers on chemistry rich in formulaeand procedural descriptions being a case in point),the old law school adage "a little knowledge is adangerous thing" rules even here. Needless to say,relying on imperfect automatization can make matterseven worse.Translation bots tend to reflect this faultyreasoning, and their backing by popular opinion -uneducated in these matters as it usually is - is nogreat help either.Here's just one example of what can happen if youopt for less-than-professional (read: usually free)"translation services". Let's take a real life Germansite rich in textual content and have a look at whatthe most popular translator bot makes of it.lt;UGLYQUOTEgt;"Welcomelytsigaan soft systems tsigaan newsSoftware and computer services, also very good, giveit meanwhile like the proverbial sand at the sea.Thousands of companies and Hirnen compile world-widedaily the most refined solutions, and although withinthis area - like everywhere in the life - all gold islong not, which probably shines there, then thestandards and the requirements of the users Rosetta Stone Portuguese in thelast years nevertheless ever more rose."Source:lt;http://www.confidenz-depesche.com/cgi-confidenz-depesche/optimiert.htmgt;"Translation":lt;http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin ranslate?gt;lt;/UGLYQUOTEgt;Seriously - would you really want to see your siterepresented in this manner? Welcomely, indeed!And don't try to argue that this is, after all,"better than nothing" - it's the seeming familiarityof the language presented, the fond illusion of "atleast getting the gist of it" that's the really nastypart. Because it can (and most certainly will!) leadyou astray in ever so many subtle ways, and in the endyou may be worse off by a long shot than if you hadn'tunderstood a single word in the first place. Simplyask yourself if you would sign a million dollarcontract of this linguistic "quality"...With the current US dominance of the WWW clearlywaning (as all major studies and analyses will show),getting linked internationally will become ever morecritical. World wide, surfers aren't content withsticking to local or localized search engines in theirown language: rather, the English language is rapidlygaining ground everywhere, even in the formercommunist states, not mention in formerly French orSpanish dominated regions. These people, more and moreof whom are well educated, bilingual and fairly wellversed in English, are increasingly making use ofstateside search engines. It is only a question oftime until even All-American engines will have toadapt to this situation, if only to accomodate theirinternational advertisers. Hence, it stands to reasonthat only link popularity based on real world webdemographics (as opposed to mere wishful thinking andestablished political and cultural prejudices) will beable to satisfy advertisers' and users' demands.So do it right or do it not! Either employ a bona fideprofessional translation service or get someone torevamp your online copy to accomodate all thoseinternational clients whose command of English, whilefairly well informed, is not quite up to par with yourUS or UK biased industrial lingo, er, parlance.This holds true vice versa for non-English sites aswell, of course: don't even dream of relying on one ofthe translator bots doing a good job and permittingyou to cut one single sale! And while your Englishteacher at school may have lauded your enthusiasm overand again, don't delude yourself that this makes you anative speaker.If you are interested in English or American orAustralian or New Zealand clients at all, don't givethem the impression of amateurish incompetence byrefusing to acknowledge the fact that your command ofEnglish may be less than perfect. This is, after all,nothing to be ashamed of - whereas [ Rosetta Stone Software ] trying to get bythis problem on the cheap very well should be! Ifthere's one thing you want to avoid in marketing it'sgetting laughed out of court.The following sites offer "translation" services or,rather, pretend to do so - use at own risk:http://babelfish.altavista.com/http:/ ranslator.go.com/http://www.dictionary.com ranslate/http://www.voila.com/Services/Translate/