Website translation research

[annablackaby]

Hi everybody. I need your opinions on a website translation service that I am looking into developing with a web design friend. Any comments on these ideas will be gratefully received.

If you required all or a part of your web site translated in another language, how would you like this to be done?

a. Draft the pages you wish to translate in English, send these to the agency and then expect to receive them back in a similar format, i.e. Word. You can then insert them yourself onto your own website. Bear in mind that you might not understand the language so you may find it difficult to distinguish things like the page title, image alt tags etc.

b. Send a copy of your website to the agency, who will then create a new page/pages based on your existing template, insert all the translated text in the correct places, change any links on the other pages and then send it back to you for you to publish.

How would you feel about both of these options? Which would you prefer? Obviously the second one might present security worries, but would you be prepared to send your files to an agency who can manipulate those files in the foreign language correctly? And how much would you expect to pay?

If you can see any other problems arising let me know!

Anna