How to translate your website into other languages

Content on the internet is dominated by the English language with as much as 25.2% of content being in English. However, there are still plenty of other languages that are widely used online.

Chinese is the second most common language, with 19.3% of content being in Chinese. The following 8 top languages make up 31.5% of web copy, with all other languages completing the online world with 23.7%.

That’s why it’s important that your website has multilingual content. In order to have a multilingual website, you need to know how to translate your website into other languages. Keep reading to find out more about multilingual websites and how to make them.

What is a multilingual website?

A multilingual website is simply a site that has content in more than one language.

Multilingual websites automatically redirect users to their preferred language based on their region i.e. the content will automatically alter to German if their location is recognised in Germany.

Having a multilingual website allows you to reach wider audiences who don’t just communicate in English, allowing you to expand your market globally.

Take a look at our step-by-step instructions to learn how to translate your website into other languages.

Person designing website translation services

How to translate your website into other languages

  1. Ensure you have the website copy in its original language
  2. Check that your website domain allows for multilingual content
  3. Source professional website translation services to translate the content
  4. Localise the website copy
  5. Translate captions on any videos or images
  6. Correct your SEO to work multilingually

Keep reading to learn more about each step of the process.

1. Ensure you have your website copy in its original language

Before you can begin translating, the first thing you need is the original copy. Ensure it’s fully signed off before you begin translations, because amending this at a later date can slow the process down of creating your multilingual website.

2. Check that your website domain allows for multilingual content

When translating your website into other languages, check that your website has this functionality. For example, if you have a Wordpress website, you need a specific Wordpress plugin such as TranslatePress, WPML, or Polylang to allow for multiple languages.

Once you know that your website already has this function, or you’ve just installed it, you can look to getting your content translated.

3. Source professional website translation services to translate the content

When you’re translating your copy, using professional website translation services should be top of your list. There are other free automatic translation options such as Google Translate, however their accuracy is far from guaranteed, and its intended to give the gist of a text rather than be used for external translation.

Professional website translation services, such as those offered by Wolfestone, use native speakers to translate content. Not only does this mean the translation is always more accurate than free tools, but a human translator can replicate emotive, persuasive copy with a strong brand voice.

4. Localise the content

Standard translations tend to only consider content word-by-word. Localised translations, however, are those which take into account the importance of cultural nuances in the translation, including dates, currencies, grammatical variances, and your chosen call to action text – particularly if you have used any puns or other colourful language that may not translate well.

When you use professional website translation services, qualified, experienced native speakers can localise content and consider these cultural variations for you.

Multimedia website translation


5. Translate captions on any videos or images

Visual content is great for enhancing webpages and engaging audiences, but when you’re translating your webpage, you also need to translate any captions you may have on these videos or images.

Having captions on video content is crucial for SEO and marketing purposes. But if you have website copy in French, for example, the last thing your French audience is going to want to see is an English-captioned video.

There are always options for fixing this. Using a closed captioning service who offer translated content will enable you to easily translate the captions in your videos.

6. Integrate multilingual SEO in your translation

You should also decide whether you wish to include multilingual SEO as part of your website translation service. This is something we'd highly recommend. We can assign a translator with SEO knowledge to deliver optimised content for each one of your new pages. This is an important step because it allows your multilingual content to be found online in native language of the users.

Each international market has its own internet searching habits and SEO needs. We start by conducting keyword research in each language that your content is now in, and updating your site’s content in line with our research.

Contact Wolfestone for professional website translation services

Now you know how to translate your website into other languages you can begin the process of reaching new foreign markets and increasing your audience pool.

Contact Wolfestone today to receive a quote from one of our experienced team who can provide high quality website translation services for your multilingual website.