Learn How To Make Your Tourism Site Multilingual Just in a Few Clicks
Having a clear picture how to advertise your tourism website can be quite a challenge. We clearly have a selection of approaches we can choose from, but which is the most effective? Which one will actually increase your revenue, and let you address a worldwide community? Because, let’s face it: we are not all polyglot and that’s the key to succeed in the tourism field.
Today, Lukas Hell from Werbeagentur twostep.at (Marketing Agency twostep.at) reveals how he helped his client to make their tourism site multilingual by using ICanLocalize’s professional translation service.
Welcome to the first article in our new ICanLocalize Case Study Series.
About the project
Main reasons to get the website translated
The site was built to attract tourists from all over the word. The site languages were chosen as follows:
- German (as the native language; 50% of customers come from Germany)
- English (as the international standard in worldwide tourism)
- Italian (second biggest group of visitors; they usually don’t speak English or German)
About the author
“Most tourists… about 50% of them come from Germany, so German is the main language. English as an international language through which people from England, France, Netherland and also Eastern countries can get to know our offer”
Lukas Hell, www.skigebiet-seefeld.at site maker
How did Lukas find out about ICanLocalize?
When I asked he didn’t hesitate, he was absolutely clear: The plugin WPML.
What’s WPML?
To put it in simple words, WPML is a WordPress Multilingual plugin that automatically integrates translations into your website. No need to manage formats or paste the translations manually. WPML does it all and it’s fully integrated with ICanLocalize.
WPML is the plugin and ICanLocalize the human translation service.
In Luke’s words:
“With the plugin I send, with one click, the site to translator and the translator pushes the content automatically back into the site so I don’t have to do anything. I just sent the site to ICanLocalize and a few days later I looked back into the site and everything was translated so… really nice.”
Why did he choose using ICanLocalize?
We all know that there are tons of translation agencies and we can’t help thinking about our budget. We always want to make the most of our money. Lukas thought the same and even though he consulted other translations agencies and compared prices, he chose ICanLocalize and he doesn’t regret it.
“It’s a good price…yes… it’s an OK price, about 9 or 10 cents per word. I found some cheaper ones at 9 or 7 cents per word, but they couldn’t push automatically into the site again and so on…and other services charged twice or three times more”
Assigning translators from ICanLocalize
Selecting the right translator for your project couldn’t be easier. ICanLocalize only works with human professional translators all translating into their native language and it offers a wide variety of selection criteria. Every time you click on a translator’s name, you will be able to see their:
What did the author focus on?
Luke’s’ selection:
“I think I had to choose between two Italian translators and I took the one with the most stars… the communication was good too”
Yes… you can actually communicate with your translators.
What happens after choosing the translator?
The only step left is sending the pages to translation through the WPML dashboard. After that, you just need to wait and make the most of your time handling anything else but translations. You will get a notification when the job is complete.
In Luke’s words:
“You can lay back, click one button, then you send the site to translators, translators translate, send back and it’s published in your site. So, you don’t have to copy text, send it to translator, get translation back, copy and paste it back into your site and look that everything is formatted as it should be with… you know… titles and pictures here, and strong text there.
Everything was looking exactly like the German site, I mean, even when they pushed the translation back, it looked as it was the first language. So this is really…hours of work that you don’t have to do… with ICanLocalize. There is no other service, I don’t know anything like this, where you can make it look like the first language”
Would Luke recommend ICanLocalize to other users?
Yes, sure. I wouldn’t only recommend ICanLocalize for WordPress customers because it’s very attractive for me, as a reseller, but I would also recommend it for everything they need to translate. They may have some brochures, a product catalogue, may be some emails or whatever.
The most important fact besides the cost factor, compared to other translation services everywhere I looked was the quality, that in the end was also good… couldn’t be better.
Luke’s suggestions to improve ICanLocalize’s service.
Lukas’ jobs consists of building new websites. So, as we as already know, he always recommends ICanLocalize and eventually the client creates an account. He considers himself a reseller of ICanLocalize’s service.
His main suggestion is:
- Improve the affiliates program by creating a kind of account for resellers
“For me, as an agency, I’m a reseller of your product, and I’m building new websites for every customer, so in the end, the customer pays the bill, so he gets a new account in ICanLocalize translation service, because I dont want to rebuild them over me. So, a new customer from my agency gets to ICanLocalize, makes an account, and does some jobs, but in the end I’m the one working in the backend.
It would be nice to get a reseller account where you can login into ICanLocalize or WPML into client’s account with your seller’s account and when translations are done you get your cut off these translations without the customer seeing that you got the cut”
Advantages of using ICanLocalize according to Luke
- Quality translations
- Native quality translations
- Time saving translation process
- Friendly user interface
- Fluent communication with translators
- Accessible rates
Benefits of translating a tourism website
Translating your tourism site will definitely give you free worldwide access. You will be able to reach every corner of the world and everybody will know you have a great product or service to offer. In the long-term, this feeds directly into increased revenue.
“The old site was…not good. This was a big update for them and it really boosted their business”
Thinking about having your tourism site translated?
Feel free to add your comments, suggestions or inquiries about website translation.