Content in Translation
Accessing new markets the right way
Council Translation: How Multi-Model Consensus Beats Single-Engine Output
Every machine translation engine has blind spots. DeepL struggles with certain idioms. Google Translate sometimes loses register. LLMs occasionally hallucinate. When your translation workflow relies on a single engine, you inherit all of its weaknesses.
The localization industry has accepted this as an unavoidable cost of automation. Post-editors spend hours fixing the same predictable errors, project after project. Quality teams develop mental checklists of “things to watch for” with each engine. It’s become so normalized that most platforms don’t even question it.
Read More
GitHub-to-Translation: Developer-First Localization
Developers live in Git. Pull requests, branches, commits, code review—the entire workflow centers on version control. Then localization happens, and suddenly there’s a disconnect: export files, upload to translation platform, wait, download, commit back to repo.
This handoff process is where localization breaks down for developer-driven products.
The developer localization friction
Typical developer-localization workflow:
- Developer changes string in code
- Someone remembers to export strings to translation platform
- Translation platform processes the change
- Someone remembers to download translations
- Developer commits translations back to repo
- Repeat for every change, in every branch
The “someone remembers” steps are where things break. Strings get changed but not translated. Translations complete but don’t make it back to the repo. Branches diverge with different translation states.
Read More
Google: auto-translated content not indexed
In a recent Office Hours stream, Google’s John Mueller set out how translating content automatically, especially at scale, can lead to manual actions on behalf of Google’s Web Spam Team, such as de-indexing machine-translated (MT) content.
He confirms translated content is not counted as duplicate content, but then goes into further detail on best practices for translation. Namely, avoiding blind use of their own Google Translate tool.
This is a good sign for search in general, showing willing to clean up the SERPs. Just as with their frequent algorithm updates which have managed to de-index swathes of content mills doing all kinds of programmatic “creation”.
Read More
How to do Translation SEO the right way
What is Translation SEO?
Translation SEO is quite simply the optimisation and re purposing of existing content for new markets. It is an easy win for marketing teams looking to gain a foot hold in adjacent foreign markets.
Companies and organisations with strong content marketing strategies can make their content work twice as hard by translating it for new audiences.
By selecting their best performing pieces and thoroughly researching the correct use of the equivalent keywords for the new market, companies can rely on the ideas and traction that the the top pieces have proven over time in their data analytics.
Read More
Language Ops launches for beta users
The simplest way to grow in new markets
If you’ve been looking to grow your online presence in parallel to your HQ country, or wondering if content in the native languages of the foreign markets visiting your site every day would convert, we’re now here to help.
It can be daunting when figuring out where to start. Searching for a reliable team of qualified translators, finding those with an understanding of SEO and web-specific issues, who can work with your XML export, who won’t charge the earth and potentially under-deliver.
Read More