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Web Hosting Forum | Lunarpages > Lunarpages Web Hosting - Online Help Desk > Lunarpages - DreamWeaver > Webdesign with translations - advice needed...
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Author Topic: Webdesign with translations - advice needed...  (Read 856 times)
LunarNewbie
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« on: April 11, 2007, 05:27:19 PM »
Hi guys!

I'm building a website with Dreamweaver that will be translated into several languages.

The index.html is of course in english and the homepage and root document.

However, when I have the other languages in subfolders, what should I name the home page in each language to get optimum search results ? For example "italian_index.html" or should I just leave it as "index.html" in the Italian subfolder, which is a copy of the English home page and just translated?

I want to reach as many guys on the other side of the globe as possible and be able to show up on THEIR search engines from the characters on the home page for each language. Does it make sense?

Would appreciate any advice anybody could give to get the optimum search results when translating a website - and HOW to set up the structure.

Thanks!  Help
LunarNewbie
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Drilldown
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« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2007, 05:49:19 AM »
Hi LunarNewbie!
I've seen it done a couple ways, for example

yoursite dot org/de/index.html , yoursite dot org/fr/index.html

yoursite dot org/de-index.html, yoursite dot org/fr-index.html (look at the W3C section on translation, they make use of this method)

Use the common abbreviation, not the full name of the language. Also be sure to put the correct lang tag (lang="en" , lang="fr", etc) in the top of each page's code after the doctype. It could be easy to slip up if they are copied from one page to the next. The W3C site explains the lang tag pretty well. Basically it tells the browser which language the document is in. With it in place, a browser can get a grip.

Agreed that the different translated versions should be in different folders. There should be no duplicate content penalties either.

Now about getting found. First, IF you post lots and lots of useful text content, even if it is all in one English version, users WILL find you from all over the world using the various local Googie / search engines. Yes, if they are interested, they will find it!

Next, how do you plan to get the versions translated? Human expert translation is a truly valuable addition to the web.  Thumbs Up

Automated translations are not worth creating a separate page for. The search engines will not likely find them worth enough added value to be indexed. Users can find these auto-translators on their own. Auto-translations are not really good enough yet, but someday they will get there, we can dream.

For being found, the name and structure of your folders and files is not as important as the page titles, descriptions and first paragraph. Be sure to put your most important search terms / keywords  for each page into the title.

Hope this is useful.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2007, 08:02:25 AM by Drilldown » Logged
LunarNewbie
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« Reply #2 on: April 12, 2007, 04:47:28 PM »
Dear Drilldown!

That is AWESOME valuable information. Thank you so much for the time and care in letting me know how to finetune my web pages.

Just something I don't fully understand, when you say "Use the common abbreviation, not the full name of the language. Also be sure to put the correct lang tag (lang="en" , lang="fr", etc) in the top of each page's code after the doctype." 
Confused

Do you mean to put the two letter language code in the "name of the page" so it shows up on the tab in the browser? Would it be something like index.de.html for the German homepage? Or should it be the content of the page like "buythisthing-de.html" ? I know it's very important to get the hyphens and dots in right place so I just wanted to make sure I understand exactly what you mean.

I will for sure study up on the W3C site and learn more from there. Thanks for the tip.  Thumbs Up

On the translation. Well, you caught me in the act! I do speak 4 languages myself, but I'm not good enough to proofread and fix grammar errors in them all and I was hoping that the free translation that comes with MS Office would make sense to the people in their language. I got excited when I highlighted an english paragraph and had it came out in Greek, Chinese and Korean! Do I speak any of those? No !  Nope

I would have to invite someone from those countries to fix the translation in exchange for something, once it's up and running. You have a very good point though - there is nothing more frustrating than trying to read something full of literal and nonsense translations full of grammatical errors. I did test it in the languages I do speak and it came out almost perfect to me so this is why I decided to take on this experimental project. Needless to say - English is not my native language...

So any other hot tip on how to aquire professional translations without having to spend a fortune?

Looking forward to your reply! Bouncin for Joy

Thanks!
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Drilldown
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« Reply #3 on: April 12, 2007, 07:29:16 PM »
In your page Title you don't want to refer to the language, you want to USE it. Put your keywords (translated) in the title.

In the page code (not the title) the lang attribute goes in the html tag after the doctype. Here is just a sample, your mileage may vary:

Code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Your Title Here In Martian</title>

This page explains it:
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/web/tips/langtag.html

Lang has certain benefits already but will increase in the future. If you are inclined this way you might also want to read related materials about Character Sets. Charset UTF-8 would be a good choice.

For two letter language abbreviations see the far right column on this page:
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php

To persuade your favorite eggheads to become your translation slaves you could offer perks (not money). T-shirts with "I translated (yoursite.com) and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!" You could come up with something funnier. Put their name in the credits if they want the attention. Donate to their favorite charity, cook dinner for them, make them homemade cookies... Knock on the door of a nearby university and ask about foreign students or professors who could volunteer.

In the meantime as you write the first version try to keep idiom to a minimum. Easier said than done, hehe. Soooo Cool

Write the meta description for each page in that language, because some search engines will use it as the snippet. It would be aggravating to see a different language under the title. Grr..!!
« Last Edit: April 12, 2007, 07:35:11 PM by Drilldown » Logged
LunarNewbie
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« Reply #4 on: April 12, 2007, 09:21:01 PM »
Whuuw!

THANKS a 1.000.000 !

You went a bit over my head there a couple of times and that just means that I have some more study to catch up on!

This will keep me busy for a while.

Thanks for your great tips and links - appreciate your time.

Hope to hear from you again. Check back and see when I have put your data to use and a bit more meat on the bones!  Happy Happy Joy Joy
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Drilldown
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« Reply #5 on: April 13, 2007, 05:42:02 AM »
LunarNewbie, Don't be dismayed about the technical lang and charset comments. Those are just something to look into as your time allows. Make your choice, put it in the code of your documents, establish your routine and you won't have to think much about that later.

The main thing I want you to know is that if you write lots and lots of useful text, even just in English only, people all over the world WILL find it and read it.

Use words in your text that will interest them. Since different countries use alternative terms / names / brands for things, even one mention of those in the body of your content will pull in readers searching for those terms in those countries. If you didn't mention those terms, your site wouldn't come up in those searches.

You won't have to put up a special sign / title to direct the traffic. You only have to build content with the right words, get your pages noticed and indexed by the search engines, and they WILL come to you.
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Hostalot
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« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2007, 06:29:56 AM »
Hi Lunarnewbie, as has been explained I would also go with the /de/index.html structure. The way to be good in terms of SEO is to provide meaningful, useful and unique content in the respective language. This should be reflected in the page titles, html doc titles (i.e. French cheese page should be fromage.html etc.) and title tags on your page like
Code:
<h1>Des fromages<h1>
and the important keywords should be repeated in the main body of your page text. In addition you should have good incoming links from sites that are highly ranked in the search engines for you respective keywords (cheese/fromage in this sample case).
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