Seminar overview

Multilingual websites require significantly more planning than single-language sites do. This course provides the knowledge you need to oversee a localisation project, and build localisation best practices, international usability testing, and multilingual customer relations into your Web strategy. We can customise the content by working with materials from your website. The seminar then provides a building block for future localisation efforts.

Objectives	Discover ways to reduce the costs and time-to-market of multilingual websites. Understand how culture impacts Web design. Learn how to choose a service vendor and manage a localisation project.
Audience	Webmasters, e-business and e-learning project managers, marketing and communications professionals, content writers.
Languages	English, French.
Duration	This is a one-day course.
Approach	The seminar combines theory, practical exercises and case studies.

Programme

Best practices in website internationalisation

HTML, style sheets and scripts
Working with graphics
Designing tables and forms
Issues with text expansion, character sets and fonts
Language negotiation

 

Content localisation

Cultural values and preferences
Translating and adapting texts
Cultural significance of images, colours and metaphors
Common cultural pitfalls to avoid
Dates, times, numbers, weights and currencies
Differences in national communication styles
Sound and multimedia components

 

Translation technologies

Machine translation
Translation memories
Mulltilingual terminology management

 

Localisation project management

Project evaluation and possible approaches
Choosing a localisation or translation vendor
Putting together a localisation kit (files, glossaries and instructions for the vendor)
Production phase and quality control
Localisation checklist

 

International usability testing

Return on investment for usability testing
Planning and moderating a usability test
Who should test the website and when?
Collecting user feedback

 

Multilingual customer relations

What are the expectations of customers in other countries?
Applications for language technologies