Website Localization Research Articles

Website Localization Strategies to Promote Global E-Commerce: The Moderating Role of Individualism and Collectivism

Website localization plays an important role in guiding firms on how to customize websites across countries in which they have a local presence. However, few studies on website localization have systematically examined this topic from a theoretically grounded perspective. Drawing upon the theoretically driven consumer-company identification perspective, we propose that three website localization strategies (web similarity strategy, web distinctiveness strategy, and web prestige strategy) have positive effects on local users’ perceived website localization, which, in turn, is related to local users’ website loyalty. We further investigate the effects of these website localization strategies in a cross-cultural setting, focusing on the individualism-collectivism dimension of culture. Based on our online experiments in both the United States and China, we find that these website localization strategies have significant impacts on consumers’ perceived website localization, which is related to consumers’ website loyalty. We also find that web distinctiveness and web prestige strategies are more effective for people from collectivistic societies than for those from individualistic societies, whereas web similarity strategies do not differ across societal types. These findings highlight the importance of website localization strategies for customizing websites for global e-commerce.

Linguistic Analysis of Dove Indonesia’s Website and Its Localization

This paper analyzes the website localization of Dove Indonesia’s website. The study, then, analyzes the adaptation and the translation technique of the translation part that includes the home page and its first next link of the website. In analyzing website localization, the theories that are used are the theory of website localization by Pym (2012) and the translation technique by Molina and Albir (2002). This study found that the website is highly localized with both adaptation and translation. Adaptation includes changes in data and time format, legal inventions, and content. The translation itself uses single and duplet translation techniques. Single technique includes amplification, borrowing, compensation, discursive creation, generalization, literal translation, modulation, particularization, reduction, and transposition. Duplet technique includes compensation and borrowing and reduction and amplification. However, the mostly used translation technique is a single technique, literal translation.

Descriptive Qualitative Analysis of the Translation of “Q&A” Section Provided by WHO Official Website during COVID 19 Pandemic: A kind of Website Localization

Descriptive Qualitative Analysis of the Translation of “Q&A” Section Provided by WHO Official Website during COVID 19 Pandemic: A kind of Website Localization

Localising INGOs websites into Arabic: A case study of IFRC

Abstract The present study aims to compare and contrast the websites of international non-government organizations (INGOs) that make their websites available in Jordan in both Arabic and English with the purpose of identifying the content that does or does not get localised. The researchers selected the website of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) as a case study. The English version of the IFRC website is meticulously set off against its Arabic counterpart. This study draws on Olvera-Lobo and Castillo-Rodríguez’s (2019) suggested framework with regards to the linguistic and cultural aspects of localised websites. The study concludes that the recommendations related to linguistic and cultural aspects of website localisation presented by Olvera-Lobo and Castillo-Rodríguez (2019) have proven to be valuable in assessing the localised versions of INGOs as they cover a wide range of facets needed by the target readerships.

One Size Does Not Fit All: On Application of Translation Theories to Teaching a Course of Website Localization

Website Localization is an important part of international technical communication. Its goal is to make an existing website culturally, linguistically, visually, technically, and rhetorically adapted (customized) to the target audience so that they can read and use it as if the website were written for them. Web localization places two tasks on technical writers: To have a good understanding of the target culture and to make their own culture and its related elements easily accepted by the target audience. As a website mainly contains verbal information, translation naturally plays an important role. Therefore, the appropriate use of translation theories helps achieve successful web localization. This article mainly focuses on how to apply translation theories to teaching website localization, using Chinese culture and American culture as examples. It analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the major translation criteria and explains how they can be used to communicate as much cultural information as possible from the source language and to increase the readability and acceptability of the target audience in the course of the website localization. Major findings are that no single translation criterion is able to handle all the translation cases effectively. In light of the nature of works to be translated, the purpose of translation, and the audience needs, various translation criteria need to be used. Suggestions are also made for customizing colors and graphics in light of the dynamic equivalence. With economical globalization, companies are competing with one another for international markets. Successful Website localization helps companies achieve this goal. So, the article is of great practical significance.

Machine Translation in Website Localization: Assessing its Translation Quality for Language Learning

This study seeks to investigate the quality of translation generated by a popular Machine Translation (MT) platform, viz. Google Translate (GT) in translating the content of a Russian flight charterer’s website from English into Indonesian. To analyze the translation quality produced by MT, we compared the original translation of the website texts translated by a human translator and the machine-translated version. The translation quality is limited to the readability level. The texts serving as the data were collected from the menus of a Russian flight chartering service website which was originally translated by an Indonesian translator. An analysis further discovered that the translation produced by MT is divided into two quality categories: less readable and readable. The less readable translation is caused by MT’s inability to adjust to stylistic forms in Indonesian, failure to do adaptation strategy and in some cases, MT tends to follow the same sentence structure of the original text (source text).

Website Localization: A Literature Review

In this article, I will focus on the crucial areas relevant to website localization: definitions, background, the relationship between localization and translation, and key concepts in website localization.

Translation and Localization: Frequent Arguments through Asymmetric Binoculars

The rapid technological developments have led to emerging industries and practices, such as the localization of websites, video games, and software. This has been directly associated with the digitization of products, including their textual content. The relatively rapid evolution in turn might be one of the reasons for the confusion of the related terms in Translation Studies (TS). While the industry introduced most of these terms, TS research adopted them in many cases or contributed to proliferating others. This multiplicity of the terms has led to more fuzziness. Given the different and contradictory points of view regarding localization, from the academia and the industry, this paper attempts to pinpoint key arguments in order to help accelerate the pace of integrating research on localization in TS, to refresh the academic perspective with this regard, and to find out where translation and TS can fit in localization. The paper sheds light on the different points of view in terms of the definition of localization, its process, and frequent arguments on its relationship to or independence from translation, on its process, agents, and other concepts compared with translation. The theoretical discussion is an attempt to contribute to previous research with this regard and to bridge the gap between TS and the industry.

Decoding transcreation in corporate website localization into Arabic

Abstract As adaptation is often associated with localization, and with the promotion of transcreation as an extra service in the industry, there is a need to analyze how and to what extent transcreation is used in localization as a type of target-culture-focused translation. This paper looks into adaptation and analyzes transcreation as a translation strategy. It investigates online promotional texts localized into Arabic (for Saudi Arabia) as an under-researched language in website localization. The analysis follows a functionalist approach and examines 15 international corporate websites. The results illustrate components of transcreated texts and shed light on the use of different procedures to achieve the creative persuasive purpose.

Research on Cultivation of Computer-aided Translation Talents under the Background of “Internet+”

In recent years, with the rapid development of language service industry, the original simple service has been far from adapting to the new development of the industry. Under the background of "Internet+", the scope of language services has expanded from simple interpretation and translation to the whole language service outsourcing, such as technical writing, website localization, multilingual information processing and other fields. Then we should start to cultivate computer-aided translation talents. At the same time, the requirements for language service practitioners are not only to master oral and written translation skills, but also to master it skills, project experience, market awareness, cross-cultural communication, professional quality, industry knowledge and localization skills, terminology management, translation technology, translation tools, typesetting and printing, translation management and other skills on this basis.

Internacionalização/tradução de um site universitário

A localização e a internacionalização de sites são práticas que visam, dentre outros objetivos, (i) atingir ou atrair clientes em novos mercados; e/ou (ii) conferir maior credibilidade e visibilidade à instituição, empresa ou produto a que se destina o seu conteúdo. Em se tratando da internacionalização de sites universitários, ambos os objetivos podem prevalecer, dependendo das metas da instituição, mas geralmente tem havido uma tendência de utilização do inglês como língua franca como forma de divulgar a instituição e atrair alunos de diferentes partes do mundo. Este trabalho apresenta os procedimentos adotados e os resultados da tradução de um site universitário. Utilizando o software Alchemy Catalyst e mediante discussões com a “cliente”, então coordenadora do curso, os autores traduziram o site do Curso de Tradução da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia com a finalidade de divulgação do curso para um público internacional leitor em língua inglesa. Os resultados revelam o compromisso firmado entre tradutores e “cliente”, bem como procedimentos de maior destaque, como a omissão.

Localization of a university website: translational aspect

This article is dedicated to one of the actively developing translation aspects in the Russian translation studies – the technology of website localization of Buryat State University. The author determines its key stages and analyzes the main translation techniques. Special attention is paid to the main aspects of localization (content, translation techniques, special lexicon, grammatical transformations, intercultural peculiarities, pragmatic adaptation). The subject of this research became the translation technique of the content of university website from Russian to English. The scientific novelty consists in identification of the aspects of localization of a university website and determination of techniques for translation of terms of the academic discourse. A conclusion is formulated that website localization is a creative process of adaptation of the content to language and cultural peculiarities of the local market. It is not limited just by the translation of text, but rather represents a form of intercultural communication, which successfulness is possible upon the condition of taking into account the sociocultural markers of the language of users.

MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION-MAKING BASED APPROACHES IN WEBSITE QUALITY AND USABILITY EVALUATION: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Websites are important in every organisation and tremendous effort is made to design websites that not only look and feel good, but are usable and of high quality. Nevertheless, one critical task is how to evaluate these websites to ensure that users are satisfied with its quality and usability. Although a variety of methods and approaches have been proposed, there is currently an increase in research efforts to model website quality and usability evaluation from the point of view of decision-makers which existing methods do not handle. Thus, this has led to the application of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches in the evaluation of websites to handle complexity in decision-making. This paper, therefore, provides a review of the various MCDM methods that have been used in the usability and quality evaluation of websites. The search strategy which was adopted identified a total of 63 published articles in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences between 2005 and 2017. From the research questions formulated for the study, the papers were classified into various MCDM approaches, website genre, number and list of criteria used over the years and the localization of websites based on country. Some of the findings showed that the Analytical Hierarchy Process approach integrated with fuzzy logic has been the most common method over the years. In addition, e-commerce websites make up the most common website genre. Besides, currently most active websites are from Turkey and five is the average number of criteria for the evaluation of website quality and usability.

Website localization

Abstract Traditionally, website translation has been considered a process moving from the global to the local, or from the major to the minor, and has largely been termed localization. Yet, the various meanings and interpretations of the term create the need for more specific terms that designate specific types of localization such as the cases where a locally generated website, created in a locale with ‘minor’ presence on the international market, needs to be provided in a language that is considered ‘major’ in cyberspace, e.g. websites into English as a lingua franca. In such cases, the website content transfer follows an opposite direction, i.e. from the local to the global. We would like to capitalize on the major-minor metaphor as a methodological tool for cases emerging as a quasi-opposite process to the prevailing conceptualization of localization, in an attempt to highlight differences which might justify new terminology. It will be argued that the concept of locale from which the term localization stems does not apply when a culturally undefined audience is addressed, and a new term will be proposed.

Machine Translation and Technicalities of Website Localization

Machine translation tools are widely used by companies. The tools are on an increasing demand. Translators need to equip themselves with the knowledge and the mastering of these tools. This study explores two machine translation tools involved in website localization. These tools are Alchemy Catalyst and Trados Tageditor. The study adopts an evaluative methodology to shed light on the intricacies and technicalities of these two localization tools. It discusses some of the cultural issues that localizers come across in the process of localization. In addition, it delves into the technical issues, mainly focusing on localizing into Arabic with a special focus on string, text, lexis, and orthography. The study concludes that the process of localization requires teamwork and involvement of computer engineers, and both localization tools are valuable in achieving a localization task.

FOREIGNIZATION AND DOMESTICATION IN THE MINISTERIAL WEBSITE LOCALIZATION

The translation is a representation of the effect of developing technology on language. Translated website or website localization with the easiness of accessibility is considered as the most efficient space for transferring the information nowadays. It certainly involves the appropriate translation strategies in order to provide reliable information required. This research aims to identify the translation strategy involved under foreignization and domestication reference in the official website localization of Ministry of Health of Republic of Indonesia, to find out the most dominant translation strategy used, and to analyze the reasons to what extent foreignization and domestication applied, by referring the classifications proposed by Venuti (2008). The source of data was taken from five (5) popular news along 2018 which were broken down into 191 data analyzed, consisting of 5 headlines in the form of phrases and sentences, contents totally written in 161 sentences, and 25 sub-contents in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The research found that the translator used all eight (8) translation strategies under domestication and foreignization reference including literal translation, transliteration, borrowing, transference, transposition, omission, addition, and adaptation, simultaneously or separately. Literal translation becomes the most dominant translation strategy used and it can indicate that the website localization is translated into source text-oriented.

LOCALIZATION OF WEBSITE VERBAL CONTENT INTO ENGLISH AS A MARKETING STRATEGY

Цель. На сегодняшний день необходимость локализации онлайн-ресурсов обусловлена глобализирующей тенденцией развития интернет-коммуникации. Стратегии локализации варьируются в зависимости от характера реализуемых посредством интернет-платформ продуктов и услуг, однако в любом случае локализованные версии предоставляют потенциальным клиентам доступ к достоверным источникам информации о мировых брендах. Целью настоящего исследования является изучение феномена локализации с лингвистической точки зрения применительно к вербальному контенту международных сайтов. В статье предпринимается попытка обоснования необходимости дифференции англоязычного контента для каждой из англоязычных стран, включенных в структуру локализованных версий сайтов, и выявить вербальные средства, за счет которых осуществляется данный процесс.Методология проведения работы. Основу исследования образуют методы контекстуального, сравнительного и прагматического анализа.Результаты. В результате проведенного исследования были описаны механизмы создания локализованного контента в рамках одного сайта и в пространстве одного языка – английского. В статье делается вывод о значимости локализации сайта и текста, в частности, на английский язык и о необходимости дифференциации между двумя уровнями, на которых может осуществляться локализация – уровень текста и интертекстуальный уровень.Область применения результатов. Результаты исследования могут быть применены в сфере осуществления масштабных проектов локализации различных видов международных сайтов.

Website Localisation in the Corporate Context: A Spanish Perspective

Website Localisation in the Corporate Context: A Spanish Perspective

Machine Translation and Technicalities of Website Localization

Machine translation tools are widely used by companies. The tools are on an increasing demand. Translators need to equip themselves with the knowledge and the mastering of these tools. This study explores two machine translation tools involved in website localization. These tools are Alchemy Catalyst and Trados Tageditor. The study adopts an evaluative methodology to shed light on the intricacies and technicalities of these two localization tools. It discusses some of the cultural issues that localizers come across in the process of localization. In addition, it delves into the technical issues, mainly focusing on localizing into Arabic with a special focus on string, text, lexis, and orthography. The study concludes that the process of localization requires teamwork and involvement of computer engineers, and both localization tools are valuable in achieving a localization task.

Attila Hildmann goes international

Abstract This study examines website localization practices against the background of a rising awareness of food culture and celebrity chef branding in a digitalized and globalized world. As part of a structured media campaign set up in 2014, the localization of Attila Hildmann’s official website substantially contributed to launching the German vegan chef’s brand in the United States, along with the promotion of his two translated cookbooks and frequent appearances in arranged US TV and radio shows. The two language versions of the official website of German vegan food celebrity Attila Hildmann are compared with respect to their form and content. The objective of the study is to determine to what extent and in which way the German website along with the persona-based culinary brand Attila Hildmann is globalized and localized into English to accommodate for the needs of an American target audience. More specifically, we want to investigate which website content has been copied without any change, and which content has been literally translated, adapted to the target locale (i.e. transcreated by adding or omitting elements), or completely recreated. Focusing on the front-end elements of both website versions, we adopt both a macro level and a micro level approach to assess the degree of localization. Eleven parameters encompassing 28 features are analyzed across selected website sections that we assume to be especially sensitive to culturally specific information and localization strategies. The analysis reveals that a hybrid strategy of globalization and localization has been employed, i.e. the website is partially localized for a US target audience.