Helping your website speak to customers around the world
Your website is often the first impression someone has of your business. If you’re reaching out to customers in other countries, you want that first impression to be a good one.
At Atlas Translations, we help businesses translate and localise their websites so they communicate clearly, naturally and effectively with international audiences.
Whether you’re translating a five-page company website, launching an international e-commerce store or managing a multilingual website with thousands of product listings, our experienced team can help.
We’ve been helping organisations communicate across languages and cultures since 1991. We know that successful website translation involves much more than replacing English words with their equivalents in another language.
Your website needs to work for the people reading it, wherever they are.
What’s the difference between website translation and website localisation?
Website translation involves converting the written content of your website from one language into another while preserving its meaning, accuracy and tone. Website localisation goes further. It considers how your website will be understood and used by people in different countries and cultures.
This might involve adapting:
- Language, terminology and writing style
- Cultural references, expressions and humour
- Dates, times, currencies and measurements
- Product names and descriptions
- Calls to action and marketing messages
- Images, graphics and text within images
- Forms, buttons and navigation menus
- Local conventions and customer expectations
- Search terms used by people in different markets
For example, a British company selling products in France might need more than a French translation of its English website. Customers may expect different product information, terminology, delivery details and purchasing instructions.
Similarly, a website written in British English may need adapting for customers in the United States, even though both audiences speak English.
Our role is to help you understand what needs translating, what needs adapting and what can remain as it is.
Professional website translation by human experts
Your website represents your business. It’s where potential customers decide whether to trust you, contact you or buy from you. Poorly translated content can undermine that trust surprisingly quickly.
Automated translation tools can produce results in seconds, but they don’t necessarily understand your brand, your customers or the wider context of your content. At Atlas, we work with professional, native-speaking translators who have expertise in the relevant subject area.
A website selling medical equipment requires very different terminology from one promoting luxury holidays or legal services. We select translators with the appropriate linguistic and specialist knowledge for your project.
Our project managers also look at the wider picture. We’ll ask questions about your audience, your intended markets, your brand voice and how the translated content will be used.
We care enough to ask questions, rather than simply translate what’s in front of us.
Multilingual SEO: helping international customers find you
There’s little point having a beautifully translated website if your potential customers can’t find it. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an important consideration when translating a website for international audiences.
But there’s a catch: people in different countries don’t necessarily search for products and services using direct translations of English keywords. A term that attracts thousands of searches in the UK may have a completely different equivalent in Germany, France or Spain.
Even countries sharing a language can use different terminology. For example, someone searching for trainers in the UK might search for sneakers in the United States. That’s why multilingual SEO requires more thought than simply translating an existing list of keywords.
Depending on your requirements, we can help with:
- Translating SEO page titles and meta descriptions
- Adapting headings and website copy for target audiences
- Incorporating researched local search terminology where appropriate
- Translating image alt text
- Maintaining consistent terminology across multilingual pages
- Working with your SEO specialists or web developers to implement an agreed international SEO strategy
Where market-specific keyword research is required, we can discuss this as part of your project and establish the appropriate scope.
We don’t pretend to be website developers or technical SEO consultants. We focus on the linguistic and cultural elements that help your website communicate effectively in another market.
E-commerce website translation
Selling internationally brings enormous opportunities, but it also creates some interesting language challenges. Product information needs to be accurate, appealing and easy to understand. Customers need to feel confident about what they’re buying.
We translate and localise content for e-commerce websites, including:
- Product names and descriptions
- Product specifications and technical information
- Category pages and navigation
- Size guides and measurement information
- Delivery and returns information
- Frequently asked questions
- Customer service information
- Checkout instructions and transactional messages
- Promotional banners and special offers
- Terms and conditions and privacy information
For businesses with large product catalogues, consistency is particularly important.
We can help establish agreed terminology and translation memories so that product names, technical descriptions and recurring phrases remain consistent across your website. And if you’re regularly adding new products, we can discuss an ongoing translation arrangement that fits your publishing schedule.
You don’t necessarily have to translate everything at once.
Website translation for different industries
Different industries have different requirements, and that’s where specialist translators make a real difference.
We regularly work with organisations across a wide range of sectors, including:
Legal and professional services: Translating service descriptions, professional profiles, client resources and legal information while maintaining appropriate terminology and tone.
Medical, pharmaceutical and healthcare: Translating specialist website content where accuracy, clarity and appropriate terminology are essential.
Manufacturing and engineering: Translating technical specifications, product catalogues, downloadable documentation and information for international distributors.
Travel, tourism and hospitality: Creating natural, engaging content that appeals to visitors from different countries.
Retail, fashion and consumer products: Adapting product descriptions, marketing messages and customer information for international audiences.
Charities and non-profit organisations: Helping organisations communicate their work, services and campaigns to multilingual communities and international supporters.
Universities and research organisations: Translating research information, departmental websites, course information and content aimed at international audiences.
Whatever your sector, we’ll match your content with translators who understand the subject matter.
Working with your website designer, developer or marketing team
Website translation doesn’t have to mean copying and pasting hundreds of individual pages into Word documents. We can work with your existing website team to establish a practical way of exchanging content.
Depending on your website and systems, this might involve:
- Word or Excel files
- CSV exports
- HTML or XML files
- Content exported from your content management system (CMS)
- Figma files and design content
- Other structured files supplied by your developer
If your website uses WordPress, Shopify or another CMS, we can discuss the most efficient way to prepare content for translation and return it in a format your team can use. We can also advise on terminology management, content preparation and how to reduce unnecessary translation costs.
Where appropriate, we can help review translated content in its website context, identifying linguistic issues such as text that doesn’t fit comfortably within buttons, menus or page layouts.
Our aim is to make the translation process straightforward for you and the people responsible for your website.
Translating a website without losing your brand voice
Your brand has a personality. Perhaps you’re friendly and informal. Perhaps your audience expects technical authority, reassurance or a more traditional professional tone. Whatever your style, it shouldn’t disappear when your website is translated.
A literal translation can be grammatically correct but sound unnatural, awkward or completely unlike your business. Our translators consider the purpose of your content and how it should make the reader feel. Sometimes that means staying close to the original wording. Sometimes it means adapting a phrase, expression or marketing message to achieve the same effect in another language.
For highly creative marketing content, we may recommend transcreation, where the message is creatively adapted rather than directly translated. We’ll explain the options and help you choose the right approach for your website and budget.
Do you need to translate your entire website?
Not necessarily. In fact, translating every single page can sometimes be an unnecessary expense.
If you’re testing a new overseas market, you might begin with your most important pages:
- Homepage
- Main services or product pages
- About us
- Contact information
- Key FAQs
- Essential purchasing or customer information
You can then expand your multilingual content as your international business develops. We’ll happily discuss which content should take priority and whether a phased approach would work for you.
Our job isn’t to persuade you to translate more words than you need. It’s to help you spend your translation budget wisely.
Keeping your multilingual website up to date
Websites rarely stand still. You add new products, publish blogs, update services, change prices and launch marketing campaigns. If your translated website isn’t updated alongside your English version, international visitors may end up seeing outdated or inconsistent information.
We can support ongoing website translation through regular projects or an agreed arrangement for recurring content. Translation memories and terminology resources can help us maintain consistency and avoid unnecessarily retranslating content that hasn’t changed.
Whether you need a handful of updates each month or regular translation of substantial amounts of content, we’ll help you establish a sensible workflow.
Human translation, machine translation or post-editing?
Not every website requires the same approach. For most content, fully human translation is the most appropriate choice, particularly where brand reputation, technical accuracy or regulatory requirements are important. For other types of content, machine translation followed by professional human post-editing (MTPE) can be worth considering.
We can discuss the advantages, limitations and likely costs of each approach. Where MTPE is appropriate, we’ll assess the quality of the machine-translated content before confirming the price and approach.
We don’t agree that machine translation is suitable for every website. And we won’t use AI translation without your agreement.
Why choose Atlas Translations for website translation?
Over 35 years of experience
Atlas Translations was established in 1991. We’ve supported businesses, public sector organisations, universities, charities and international companies with their language requirements ever since.
Professional, specialist translators
We work with experienced, native-speaking translators selected for their subject expertise as well as their language skills.
An experienced in-house team
You’ll have a project manager overseeing your translation, answering questions, coordinating the work and keeping everything on track.
Quality you can trust
We’re ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 certified, reflecting our commitment to quality management and professional translation processes.
More than translation
We can also help with multilingual marketing content, subtitling, voiceovers, desktop publishing and other language services that may support your international website and wider marketing activities.
Practical, honest advice
We’ll tell you if we think there’s a more efficient way to manage your project, whether that’s prioritising certain pages, reusing approved terminology or organising translations in batches.
