Multilingual Website Design: Best Practices

1. Multilingual Website Design: Best Practices While automatic browser translators can change the language of a website, they often fail to register the essence of a language, resulting in a basic and even erroneous translation. Multilingual websites take cultural references, idioms, and dialects into account and thereby appeals more to native users. That’s why, website owners these days, prefer to design multilingual websites to cater to a wide audience with the same level of professionalism and credibility. Now, designing a multilingual website is more challenging than it sounds. But we made it easier for you! Today, we will outline some of the best practices of multilingual website design recommended and followed by any reputed website development company. Check these out to get a comprehensive idea.

2. Effective Tips for Multilingual Website Design Global Templates While the language will change for different places, your branding should be consistent. That means the English version of your website should ‘feel’ the same as the Spanish version. You need to make sure that the layout and other web design elements (e.g. - contact form, drop-down menu, etc.) remain the same even if the default language changes. Of course, you can feature different images, content, and campaigns on your site to meet the taste and preferences of the locale-specific audience. Global templates are also flexible enough to accommodate bidirectional languages like Arabic that has a right-to-left orientation (more on this later). Language There are various tools to help you translate a language but we don’t recommend these. These are not professional and you may not get the optimal results. Every language has its essence, turns of phrases, intent, and expressive meanings. A computer, no matter how smart it is, cannot grab all the complexities of a language. You never know how a single mistake may accidentally confuse or offend the users. Why take the risk! It’s better to hire native content writers who know the grammatical inconsistencies, idioms and ‘strange’ usages that flow through the vernacular. Language Switcher Allowing the users to switch language on your website offers greater flexibility. Usually, the language switcher drop-down menu is placed on the right corner of the header section. It enables the users to easily switch language and feel inclusiveness on your site. This instantly enhances brand reliability.

3. You can use intuitive icons like a globe or flag or language name to denote the language switcher. Right-to-Left Design Usually, the format of the websites we access is from left to right. But, for languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu, etc., the website design should display a right-to-left format. Technically, the right-to-left design is “flipping the interface”. For such a design, you need to assign the body tag to the dir=“rtl attribute. That way, the entire markup will be mirrored. The logo will be placed on the right and the login- container will be on the left. You can check out this blog to learn more about right-to-left design (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/11/right-to-left- mobile-design/). We know it’s a lot. If you are not sure how to implement these elements, it’s better to engage professional website design services. Leave the matter to the experts for the best results. Culturally Appropriate Colours Do you know that interpretation of colours varies across different cultures? For instance, while red has a positive connotation of love, energy, passion, and celebration in Western and Asian culture, some African countries associate red with death. Similarly, blue is noted by many as the colour of trust and positive vibes, but some states connect it with sadness and depression. Therefore, make sure to research well about colour symbolism before designing your site for different locales. Date Format & Units of Measurement

4. Various countries use date format differently. For instance, the common date format in the UK is date-month-year. On the other hand, the USA date format is month-date-year. Similarly, the units of measure will also vary from one state to another. For instance, most of the countries use the metric system, Myanmar, Liberia, and the USA use the imperial system of weights and measures. Images Images are integral to any website. But visuals are subjective to diverse cultural contexts. For instance, if you access Nike website in the African language, you can see African models featured in the image. Again, the Indian version of the website features Indian models. This strategy instantly builds a connection with the target audience. Similarly, visuals can also be offensive. For instance, images related to gay couples can be taboo in countries where homosexuality is illegal. The models’ outfits on a website targeting liberal countries may not be accepted in some not-so-liberal countries. You need to be attentive to cultural sensitivities while designing a multilingual website. Payment Gateways If you want to facilitate payment transactions on your website, you need to internationalize the payment gateway. For instance, Braintree payment gateway is available in Australia but not in India. On the other hand, PayPal is a widely popular payment gateway accessible around the world. You can also keep a provision for net banking and credit/debit card to allow the users to easily make a payment no matter wherever they stay. As you can understand, a multilingual website celebrates inclusiveness. Hence, you need to pay attention to various aspects before embarking on your project.

5. Text Expansion While translating, some languages may occupy around 35% more space than others. Therefore, you need to plan properly while localizing the user interface, site navigation menus, and even call-to-actions. For instance, Chinese and Korean are more concise languages. On the other hand, German and Portuguese can be wordier. Have you noted Amazon’s “Add to Cart” button? It has lots of extra space around the text not only to enable easy access but also to fit a longer text in different languages. Character and line-height should be yet another consideration. For instance, Arabic scripts require more vertical space than many other languages. Following the above-mentioned tips will help you to create an all-inclusive multilingual website. Try these and thank us later! Resource: https://webguruinfosystems.blogspot.com/2021/05/multilingual-website-design- best.html ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… WebGuru Infosystems Y8, Block-EP, Sector V, Salt Lake, Kolkata-700091, India Website: https://www.webguru-india.com/ Email: enquiry@webguru-india.com Phone: +91-8420197208 Follow us on: