The Difference between Translation and Localization

By Penny Cooper

A lot of websites are meant for an international audience. This demands its availability in more than one language. What companies often do is find website translation agencies to do the job. However, what website companies often forget to consider is the localization aspect while translating content.

Localization can be defined as making a piece of software available to individuals belonging to a different culture. This process involves taking that piece of software and altering it in such a manner, that it is culture specific to the user. It goes beyond just literal translations. Localization involves entirely recreating the software. Unlike translation, localization is very user specific.

While translation is subject, the emphasis of localization lies on the user. The idea behind localization is to change the software in such a way that the user is able to decipher it, in context of his or her culture. Localization is one of the most recent popular concepts in multilingual SEO. It is vital to digital marketing and translation companies are quickly adapting to it as well. Translation is now considered just one of the steps of localization.

Translation refers to changing the language of a website. Localization on the other hand aims at making the website functional to users from that different culture. It is important that users from targeted cultures are able to interpret the meanings of websites and not just read it. Localization handles this crucial aspect. Before the localization process begins, a market research is required along with an analysis of the website in question and an on page optimization in order to create a template for the site. Only once software is optimized for a specific search market, it can be localized. By this it is evident, that translation is just one step towards website transformation, which makes it available to a specific intended set of people.

Author Bio: Penny Cooper is a senior writer with SEO writing and Article spinning service firm Article Bakery. She has interests ranging from social media, copywriting to following web technologies and trends.

The Difference between Translation and Localization 1

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