Content on the Multilingual Web
A few weeks ago we were fortunate enough to be invited to participate in a W3C multilingual event in Pisa (see http://www.multilingualweb.eu/), where I had the privilege to speak.
The event was an eclectic mix of folks from the multilingual web ecosystem; from EU funded projects, academic researchers, Google, Microsoft to smaller vendors and (most importantly) the folks that are facing this challenge today.
This made for some interesting sessions. There were techies down in the weeds showing us code, discussions on standards, crowd sourcing, machine translation and organisations (like Facebook) kindly showing us how they've approached the multi-lingual web.
Food for thought and I admit I was expecting to be slightly fish out of water, a WCM guy gasping for air in a pool of language folks. But.. no...
Essentially this is a content management problem.
Yes, I am stating the obvious - but aside from the task that is happening (translation) the publishing workflow, management of versions and variants (etc, etc..) is a familiar business problem. It seems to me that if you are faced with managing multi-lingual content, perhaps a good start is to take a look at your content strategy, content management procedures, policies and systems.
This is reflected in research by the Gilbane Group, titled Multilingual Marketing Content: Growing International Business with Global Content Value Chains (that you can download for free from the Research Reports section of their website) in which they discuss the need for content strategy:
More and more global companies are seeking and grooming content strategists—very senior level professionals who are responsible for managing content assets in all languages across their organizations. These companies recognize the need for a core management function that develops guiding principles for making decisions about content and how it can be used most effectively to achieve larger corporate objectives
(You can also read a quick summary of what to find in that paper on CMSWire)
Back to Pisa, this thinking was also reflected in a great discussion I had with Lise Janody, an experienced content strategist who shared this view - and who's presence I think reflected the broad church of folks that the event attracted and that this displine touches.
Anyway soon it was my turn to speak, I focused on the importance of localization and language in web engagement - more on that in my next post...
thanks for your great posting, I am awaiting for your next post. There are number of things going in my mind when i plan to go for multilingual website. Apart from Content which is indeed a very important role in multilingual website. There are other things related with SEO comes to my mind.. like how to achieve a good ranking in other country where English is not a main language and how to do the keyword research . these are few question which are disturbing me a lot.
Posted by: imran_translation | 05/13/2011 at 01:39 PM
Hi Imran,
Absolutely agree, good point about SEO and thanks for reminding me I need to do that follow up post!
Yes, engaging with your audience across multiple languages is indeed much more than translating content, I agree it requires a number of disciplines, including optimization for that locale, in terms of search (as you point out) and also in the way that content is presented and how you connect a multi-lingual community around your content in the social web (user generated content, like comments for example).
This is what I was trying to point out in this short blog post, that defining and managing a content strategy around engaging a multi-lingual audience over the web, is essential - that we look beyond just translation as a tick box in a process.
Thanks for your comment,
Ian
Posted by: Ian Truscott | 05/13/2011 at 02:10 PM
I'd like to echo Imran's comment regarding international SEO factors in translation. It can get complicated quite quickly when you are converting content into a different language. Not only is the content on the site obviously new and must be treated as such from an SEO standpoint, but all of the data behind the scenes must be compliant internationally as well. I was recently offered the opportunity to perform SEO on a multi-language, multi-nation site but couldn't find any definitive resources on multi-country optimization. It's a tricky, yet very important component of international SEO.
Posted by: Website Design Virginia | 02/24/2012 at 08:56 AM