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1. Use written text in your website as opposed to "embedded text"

Online translation tools are very limited in that they produce written text. If you want written text to appear in your graphic elements, you will need to insert those written translations into your graphics manually. This is called "embedded text," and it is a bad idea. Why? Embedded text is unwieldy and costly. If you are not familiar with graphic artist tools like Adobe Photoshop, you will need to hire a specialist to embed text. It is a better idea to ask your web designer to put as much written content in HTML format so that it can be easily replaced by a cut-and-paste operation. Further, embedded text cannot be indexed by popular search engines, and, in terms of your web presence, that text does not exist, even for people searching for it online.

When considering the layout of the written content of your website, keep text expansion and text compression in mind. Text expansion occurs when sentences in English are actually longer in another language like Spanish or German. Text compression occurs when sentences in English are actually shorter in another language, like Chinese or Japanese. By designing the written content containers on your website to allow for text expansion and compression - without interfering with other website elements - you will ensure that your translated web site maintains the visual integrity you originally intended.

Each discipline has its own jargon. Your website's "lexicon" is the body of words that you accept as correct. To determine what words are correct for your industry or discipline, you may need to send vocabulary lists to translators or avail yourself of professional translation services.

Remove culturally-bound language from your advertising copy online. This can be particularly tricky sine a lot of advertising copy is created by using clever plays on words. These can be extraordinarily difficult to translate, and online translation tools will almost always give you a ridiculous translation. For example, if you said somebody was a "book worm" in Spanish by translating it literally, you would get perplexed looks from Spanish speakers. In Spanish translation, our "book worm" - that is, somebody who reads a lot - becomes a "library mouse," or ratón de biblioteca; it isn't a worm in a book.

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