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5 Benefits to Having Your Blog Speak a Foreign Language

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Speak a Foreign Language

As 2012 quickly approaches, many business owners are asking themselves: How am I going to improve my website for the New Year? Improving the details of a current website is extremely important, but as a company owner you likely want your website to be unique. You want something new. You want something that will give your competition a run for its money.

One thing that many company websites have yet to explore is the idea of foreign languages. Although many websites are working hard to generate quality content and grab that number one spot on a Google search results page, many have ignored the possibility of foreign language options on their blog and/or website. This means, then, that this just may be the ticket to everything you hoped for in 2012.

If you are new to the blogging scene or are just starting a small business, it is probably best to learn the ins and outs of the industry before worrying about translation services. However, offering a blog in another language is actually quite simple. If you feel your company has a large presence of non-native English speakers, or your business is well-established and ready for something new, translating a blog is something to consider. Consider a few of the benefits to offering foreign language translations:

5 Benefits to Translating Your Blog into a Foreign Language

1. More people will be reading your content.

Although English is the most used language on the Internet (at 536.6 million users to be exact), many business owners do not realize that many English speakers speak English as a second language. If you allow readers to translate your website to their native tongue, chances are they would return over and over again for convenience. Things can be understood the best in someone’s native language, so you will also avoid any misunderstandings if you give your readers this option.

Furthermore, there are of course people using the Internet who do not speak English. If you allow them to translate your blog easily on your webpage, you will suddenly capture the eyes and ears of all the non-native English speakers around the world.

2. You will be able to rank higher on non-English search engines.

There is significantly less competition to get a website ranked on a search engine in a language other than English. This is, of course, because English is the most widely used language on the Internet; therefore there is more competition. With less competition, those who don’t speak English will be able to find your website easily; thus driving traffic to your site.

3. You will gain new viewpoints about your website and/or blog.

Most websites have a space for visitor feedback and suggestions. Making your content available to a wider group of people will allow for more opinions. This will allow for your website to continue to improve and grow. Furthermore, people who speak different languages and are a part of different cultures may come up with ideas that never would have crossed your mind. If the comments come to you in a different language, simply copy and paste them into Google Translate (although you will be surprised how many will actually comment in English!).

4. Duplicate Content Doesn’t Count Across Languages

You will not need to write special articles in order to get them ranked on a non-English search engine. Duplicate content doesn’t apply across languages, so you will have nothing to worry about from this angle.

5. It’s easy to setup and completely free.

In order to get your website/blog started in another language, you have to download a translation service. One of the easiest and most popular services is Google Translate. All you have to do is copy and paste this code into a Text Widget on WordPress. Once completed, your blog will have a nice drop down menu that allows readers to select a language. Most services offer more than one language (Google Translate offers 52) so you can reach a large number of people. It’s as simple as that!

The whole point of a website is to offer information and advice, so why wouldn’t you want to share that expertise with as many people as possible? Utilizing translation services is something many companies are missing, yet it is so simple to complete. If you’re ready for an improvement on your website, I highly recommend taking a few minutes and setting up Google Translate.

About

Amanda DiSilvestro is the Editor-in-chief for Plan, Write, GO. She has been writing about all things digital marketing, both as a ghostwriter, guest writer, and blog manager, for over 10 years. Check out her blogging services to learn more!

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{ 52 Responses }

  1. Brenda Lowry says:
    Log in to your Gmail or Google account, or create a new one if necessary. Navigate to the top of the page and click on the "More" link. Choose "Even More" from the drop-down menu and click on Google Translate from the new page that appears.
  2. Brenda Lowry says:
    You've probably encountered the frustration of finding just the right website in a search only to discover it's not in a language you can understand. Or maybe you want to make your own website available in other languages. Perhaps you just simply just need to know how to say a word or phrase in a different language. Google Translate is a really simple, one-stop way to solve these problems. It has a number of tools you can use to translate web pages and text into many different foreign languages
  3. Patricia Lane says:
    A **professional** blog that uses automatic translation tools (Google or others) to make those carefully crafted posts and articles available to prospects in other languages shoots itself in the foot. A quick and not exhaustive list of reasons: 1. It damages the company or the professional's reputation on line. The "translation" sounds like gobbledygook. It shows a total lack of respect and consideration for readers/prospects. 2. Increasingly, high rankings in Google depend on quality content. Content that sounds like a monkey wrote it will be penalized. 3. If an Internet user **chooses** to use an automatic translation tool to get an idea of what an article is about, that's one thing. But Internet users have little patience: if I run a search for something and find a link that looks promising, I'm pretty ticked off when I land on a page that's gibberish. The person behind that rotten idea wasted my time. If I was looking for a supplier or service provider, they've just lost an opportunity. If you're serious about your blog, or if it is an important marcomm vehicle for your business, be wary of the unintended consequences of using automatic translation tools to promote your product/service abroad.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      I will agree that a blog with a goal of appealing to those who speak other languages should have their content looked at and translated by a native speaker. This is, of course, the absolute best way to translate your blog. However, this can be extremely time consuming and expensive, and not all blogs have that type of time or money. Some blogs aren't trying to make foreign countries/languages their target market; they just want to help. I think that Google translate is still better than nothing. Those who choose to use the drop-down menu and translate the piece of content are aware that the blog uses an automatic translation service. You say that "if they choose to do it themselves that's one thing," and I think Google translate just helps people make these choices. I know as an English speaker, if I saw a blog that looked promising, I would love the option to translate it into English. I know it's going to be broken English, but at least the blog gave me the chance to read it in broken English. I would get the meaning, and I would appreciate the fact that I could get the meaning easily and without having to go to measures to translate the blog on my own. I do agree with you though. Thanks for reading!
  4. Geoff Vincent says:
    Amanada, this is great. My site is perfect to be viewed in Spanish and this is a good way to test things a little on my blog to start. Thanks for this tip. Geoff
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      Awesome! Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.
  5. Pradeep says:
    I will also recommend regional languages, if you are targeting some traffic from a specific country. Some blogs have subdomains like fr.domainname.com for French version of their sites, I think having one like that is very useful. Thanks for the post Amanda. :)
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      Thanks for the tip! I can see how that would be great for a blog.
  6. Jon Anscher says:
    Great reasons to maintain a blog in multiple languages. It's still amazing to me how close we have come to the universal translator.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      Wouldn't that be incredible?
      • Jon Anscher says:
        Yes it would, and I would imagine we are not far off. Especially with things like Siri. Of course, we also might not be far off from Skynet and a robot takeover :-P.
  7. Jess says:
    But do you know what problem can arise? The online translators are not perfect, especially if you translate from English to, for example, Russian, a totally different language in its structure. So, readers will prefer to read an original article or to find an alike one in their language to reading an article with enormous number of mistakes.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      I definitely agree with you. Translations aren't perfect by any means, but I still think it's worth giving the option. People who read an article through a translated version know that it's not going to be perfect, but they can usually get the overall message. If you've ever read an article in English that was translated (I actually taught international students for about two years!), you can tell things are wrong, but you still get what the article is saying. I think it's at least worth giving the option! Thanks for reading!
  8. John New says:
    Hi Amanda, This is such a great article, and coming from a person who speaks a few more lanquages than a normal person would but-does-not-have-any-idea how to use a blog for marketing can be a very big advantage.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      I think you make a great point. People (myself including) often think about translation services as a way to help the reader. However, it can also be a great way to help a writer!
  9. Saket Jajodia says:
    There are many more benefits, we/our blog also get to know in more countries and also there are many tool and widgets by which we can give our users to translate e.g.: Google Translate. Thanks Amanda for this post..!! :)
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      It's always exciting when you nab new readers and you're right when you say your blog will become more known in other countries. It can be a great way to meet people from around the world and share your expertise with anyone who wants it. Thanks for reading!
      • Saket Jajodia says:
        Thanks to you for this article.. It will surly going to help a lot people who want to share there content other people in different languages..!! :)
  10. Ming Jong Tey says:
    Hi Amanda, Thanks for the 5 tips. I just loaded the Google Translation script on my blog and it works perfectly. I'll see if there will be more people keen to translate to their native language when they are on my blog. Cheers, Ming
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      Great news! I'm so glad it's working out for you. I think it will really add another layer to your blog and the quality of your blog.
  11. Cristian Balau says:
    I'm confused. Will I get indexed in Google if I use the Google Translation script? My native language is not English so I can add another two languages pretty easy to some of my blogs not that I think about it. But should I make a new section or just install a translation script??
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      I believe a "new section" is not necessary. If you just upload the script everything should work perfectly and you will get indexed in Google. I hope that helps! The fact that you speak another language will also be great because you can fix any minor translation errors.
  12. Sergio Felix says:
    Hey Amanda, I tried to figure out how to have my blog in two different versions (one per language) and then decided it was going to be a living hell to maintain. Then I read somewhere that it was better to have the blog on another domain to maintain both entities separated to not hurt their SEO ranking (something that had to do with geo location and google webmasters setting according to the site language). So in shorter words, I completely ditched the idea but right now that I just found your article, I think this is an amazing solution for a few niche based sites I want to try out for this 2012. So thanks, I'm definitely going to implement this and by reading the other comments, it seems like it may actually work. Speak soon and top notch information, take care! ;-) Sergio
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      If the blog was on another domain you're right--that would be a nightmare to maintain. This is just a simple plugin, so I think it will solve your problems. Let me know how it works and good luck!
  13. Alan Cliffe says:
    At first I thought "what a brilliant idea," then realised that I use the iTranslation app through the wibiya toolbar, it allows your users to instantly translate your website into their own language. I am not an affiliate in any way, just like to help. You can see it in action on my blog.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      That's great!
      • Alan Cliffe says:
        Thanks Amanda, I'd forgotten about the translation feature on wibiya. reading your post reminded me about it, so over I went into the settings and found it was only set up for 4 languages, but now I've ticked the boxes of all languages and made the translation far more functional. Thanks again :-)
  14. Mark says:
    Hi Amanda, That's a great plan for 2012. I recently added Google translator to my main blog right at the top of the article in a div tag. I know for a fact that people read the articles in other languages because I get comments in other languages that are actually relevant when translated back. LOL! I guess that they were thinking about the comment and forgot they read via translator...at least I hope that is the reason :) Great article :) Mark
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      Thanks for the tip! It's good to hear from someone who knows its value. I think people are nervous about seeing comments in another language, but it's not too difficult to translate using the translation tools, right?
  15. doug_eike says:
    The idea of translating blog posts into other languages is a good one, and I like the advantages you site to doing so. The suggestion of using downloaded translation software, however, is simply not workable, unless, of course, you don't care about the quality of writing on your blog. No automatic translator exists that adequately translates text without being tweaked (a lot) by someone who is fluent in both languages. Unedited, the translations are disastrous and would be damaging to any well-crafted blog. Thanks for the insights!
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      You're definitely right when you say no software will be exactly perfect. However, I think that people expect this when they're communication from language to language. I know that when I get non-native English speakers commenting on my blog, the language is a little off (and it's because they used a translator). Therefore I would have to agree that yes, the quality of writing will go down on your blog when translated to another language; however the meaning and quality of content really shouldn't. I think people will understand that translation may cause issues, but in my opinion that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used. Thanks so much for reading! I think it's important that people realize translation isn't perfect (otherwise they could be in for a big surprise!)
  16. Satrap says:
    Hey Amanda, You completely convinced me on this. I thought about Google translate before, but never really thought about the benefit of enabling readers to read the blog in their native language. Your 5 reasons are all spot on. I will be installing Google translate today. I just hope its easy to do as I am terrible when it comes to coding and things like that. Thank you.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      How wonderful! Let me know how it works out!
  17. Dr Z says:
    Google Translate is ok for very casual use. I used it on my website ( menu covers) and our German supplier sent us a furious E-mail insisting that we change the wording. Apparently it had translated a good few words outrageously wrong and this realy offended him! Happy New Year – May your blog go from strength to strength!
  18. Mary MacDonald says:
    What a simple but fantastic tip. I never really thought about a translation option before. I've already put it onto one of my sites, and will place it on my others soon. Thanks.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      Awesome! It is so simple, yet not too many people really get into the details.
  19. Itender Rawat says:
    Intresting post...Liked
  20. Raj says:
    We can hire professional translators to translate our site, but we cannot judge the quality of such translations. Besides, we cannot answer the comments on that blog. Its better to take up a 6-month/ 1-year foreign language course (part-time) and start writing your posts in another language yourself. The biggest advantage is the increase in adsense earnings.
  21. Gregg Camp says:
    You got a point regarding responding in a foreign language. If we don't know the language we may end up giving them unsatisfactory responses so maybe the answer lies in hiring a linguist. Its an added advantage to make a blog speak different languages, I'm sure many bloggers wants to implement this method.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      As I researched, I actually found that many readers will respond in English! They want to read the post in their native language (because it's so long they wouldn't want to translate it all), but then they like to comment in English. Even if someone doesn't comment in English, you can formulate your response, throw it into the Google translator, and copy and paste. It's very easy!
  22. Trung Nguyen says:
    I'm a non-English blogger but I think blogging in English is better for me, I want to learn English but anyways, thanks for the share this useful post.
    • Carsten says:
      Though I'm not a native english speaker I started an english blog last week. One reason for this is to take a new challenge and to improve my english writing skills. But the main reason for me is that an english blog might gain me more visitors and readers than my mother language would offer.
      • Trung Nguyen says:
        Yes, I total agree with you, Carsten.
  23. Tushar says:
    You are so, so right. I have never thought about this. Infact, as i can see, there is huge untapped potential in this foreign language blogging and we bloggers are not making use of it. That too when it is completely free,
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      Exactly. It's free, so why wouldn't you want to implement it? Thanks for reading!
  24. gautam hans says:
    Google Translate is a good tool but it's not perfect. It has some translation issues which can pose a problem for those who use native language only. Although, a complete manual translation will retain the meaning of the articles.
    • Amanda DiSilvestro says:
      You are correct. I'm glad you brought that up. Google translate cannot translate a language perfectly, yet the meaning should still get across.
  25. abhiz says:
    You are right! the blog or the website in English is the best! Eglish is a global language and its spreading all over. Some countries like China always looking for their own native language websites.
  26. nandar says:
    As I was researching, I actually found that although many people will read the blog in their native language, they will usually try to respond in English! Even if they do respond in a different language, Google Translate is really easy. It definitely seems like it would be tricky/a lot of work, but I think you’ll find it’s quick and simple. Let me know how it works out!
  27. Amanda DiSilvestro says:
    As I was researching, I actually found that although many people will read the blog in their native language, they will usually try to respond in English! Even if they do respond in a different language, Google Translate is really easy. It definitely seems like it would be tricky/a lot of work, but I think you'll find it's quick and simple. Let me know how it works out!
  28. Morgan says:
    I have been toying with the idea recently about making my website readable in foreign languages, however, I fear that I wouldn't be able to accommodate a proper response to them because I don't speak the language. I suppose Google Translate would do a fine job in translating both for them and for me, but it would still be tricky to be able to respond to them in their language. It's a super idea, though! Thanks for the article, Amanda!