Translating a website is not the same as translating a document. The text is scattered across pages, menus, buttons and invisible tags, and every mistake is publicly visible. Here are the recommendations we apply and the mistakes we see most often.
Translate the tags, not just the visible text
This is the most common omission. Title tags and meta descriptions never appear on the page but they do appear in search results. A site with translated content and French tags loses most of the benefit: foreign visitors see a result in a language they do not read and move on. Image alt text, button labels and form error messages need translating too.
Adapt keywords instead of translating them
A literally translated keyword often misses its target. Search habits differ between countries: the most common term in one language has no direct equivalent in another, and the correct word is not always the one people type. Researching each market before translating avoids producing pages that are accurate but invisible.
Declare language versions correctly
Search engines need to know which version to show to which visitor. That means consistent hreflang tags: every version must point to all the others, including itself, with valid language codes. An incomplete or contradictory declaration leads Google to ignore the whole set and choose for itself, often badly.
Never publish unreviewed machine translation
Machine translation has improved a great deal, but it grasps neither legal context, nor register, nor the conventions of a given sector. On a commercial site, clumsy wording costs you the visitor's trust; on terms of sale or legal notices, it can have legal consequences. Professional review remains essential, even on a machine-translated base.
Allow for the space each language takes
German text runs longer than French, Arabic reads right to left. A button sized for a short word ends up truncated, a layout designed for left-to-right reading falls apart. Every version must be tested in the live site, not only in a spreadsheet.
Deal with text inside images
An image containing text cannot be handled by a translator: it has to be remade. This is often discovered late, once everything else is ready. Anticipating it prevents a banner or infographic staying in French in the middle of an English page.
Keep the versions up to date
A website lives on: new pages, revised prices, published articles. Without an update process, foreign versions fall behind and end up contradicting the original. It is better to plan from the start how translations will follow new publications.
What we recommend
Have every version reviewed by a second linguist, test the real display before going live, and give technical access to the team doing the integration — this avoids passing files back and forth and copy-paste errors. See our web localisation service or request a quote, telling us your website address and target languages.