One brand, several languages: building a multilingual website
Guests and buyers of hotels, residences and yachts read in many languages. A website that is merely translated tells them they were an afterthought. One that is adapted, and set up properly for search, tells them they were expected.
Translate, adapt or write anew
Not every page needs the same treatment. Legal pages and practical information should be translated precisely. Room descriptions, service pages and headlines need adapting: the same idea, written by a native writer for the way that market thinks and searches. Campaign pages for a single market are often better written from scratch.
What changes from market to market
- What people search for. The words used to look for a villa, a charter or a residence differ between languages, and often between countries that share one. Research the search terms in each language rather than translating the English ones.
- What people need to know. Payment, transfers from the airports they fly from, school holidays, visas. The practical questions change with the market.
- Tone. Formality, humour and how directly a brand addresses the reader all vary. A tone that feels warm in English can read as casual in another language, or the reverse.
- Typography. Cyrillic and other scripts need typefaces that support them properly, and longer words need room in buttons and menus.
Set it up so search engines understand
- Give each language its own address, such as a folder: /ru/ or /de/. Do not switch the language on the same address with a script.
- Link every page to its twin in each language with hreflang tags, and list them in the sitemap.
- Translate page titles, descriptions, image descriptions and structured data, not only the visible text.
- Let visitors choose with a clear language switch, and remember their choice. Do not redirect automatically by location: a Russian-speaking client in London may still prefer Russian.
Keep the languages in step
Most multilingual sites drift apart within a year: a new suite in English only, an old price in German. Decide who looks after each language, and publish changes in all of them at once, or not at all.
The studio builds multilingual websites, written by native writers and set up for search in each market. See search optimisation.
