Translating a page for usability.

[jomariet]

The client http://www.sheratonanchoragehotel.com is interested in translating some or all of the site into several languages. Translating all of it is not in the budget at this time so I was thinking about creating an international version of the site with only 3 pages each:

Home - Introduction similar to http://www.sheratonanchoragehotel.com/home.htm

Hotel - reservation info, brief description of the rooms, quick ammenities guides.

Meetings - overview and quick contact info.

Then we could have these pages translated as the budget allows into the primary languages of the clientele.

OR we could just add links to the google language tool to all existing pages? The problem with this is that any text in graphics aren't translated and its not as professional.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Psychic impressions of future disaster?

Thanks,

JM

[alextj]

Jomariet,
I liked the site - didn't quite follow the fish thing though...

The first thing that strikes me is that if the majority of hotel clients speak a relatively narrow range of languages such as French, German, Japanese, Italian and Chinese, then I'd expect some of the hotel staff are fluent or at least passable in some of these languages. Why don't you ask your client about using their staff to translate, especially as the text would only be about 500 words or so, and it would also probably work out as the cheapest option.

As for getting it done professionally, you're probably only talking about around the $1000 mark for 500 words into 5 languages - but be careful who you choose: the bigger, the more expensive, and I'm trying to avoid shamelessly promoting ourselves :)

Hope it helps,
Alex

[jomariet]

:-) The fish thing is an alaskan thing...

Thanks for those ideas. I think the in house staff is a good idea. The big question I'm still wrestling with is still do we shoot for the entire site or a smaller language specific page. At the prices you mentioned it would cost a bundle to do the whole site in several languages. But - and it's a big but - I don't want a visitor to think we are undervaluing them because we go too small.

Thoughts?

JM

[alextj]

JM,
3 or 4 pages should be enough to enable potential guests to get a good idea of the look, feel and facilities, but they need to be good quality and well laid out. Make sure you ask the staff about the appropriate keyword translations from a cultural point of view which - I'm not even going to start with the vacation vs holiday debate, and that's just in English - as after all they need to find the site first. This is one advantage of choosing a specialised SEO translation company, but some of the staff might be mothertongue or have a good feel for the actual common usage of the language.

I hope you don't mind me saying, but from a design point of view I got awfully lost on the site - the navigation could be clearer and many of the topics seemed to be there as padding and didn't really draw my attention, and the text and images could be re-arranged to better effect. I appreciate you're in the design phase, but FYI there were a couple of typos.

One last thing that's probably more important - my Norton Antivirus went crazy and almost crashed my browser when I went to the reservations page. I don't know why, but it's something to look into.

I hope the feedback's useful,
Alex