Website translation: methods, services, costs, and SEO

Définition

What is website translation?

Website translation converts a website's content into other languages so visitors can read it and search engines can index it in each language. A complete translation covers more than the visible text: titles and meta descriptions, navigation, forms, error messages, image alt text, and content loaded from a database or API. Website localization goes a step further and adapts formats, examples, and keywords to each market.

• Website translator: software that translates and serves pages automatically.
• Website translation services: human translators or agencies, often paired with software.
• Website localization: translation plus adaptation to a market's conventions and search terms.

Methods

Five ways to translate a website

The methods differ in where translation happens, who maintains it, and whether search engines can see the translated pages. Choose based on how your site is built and whether you need the translations to rank.

• SDK in your application (Altified): translations are rendered by your own Next.js app at URLs such as /fr/pricing, including database and API content and translated metadata. Needs a developer.
• Hosted website translator: a service such as Weglot, ConveyThis, GTranslate, or Linguise translates pages and serves them on subdirectories or subdomains. Little or no code.
• CMS plugin: a translation plugin inside WordPress, Shopify, or another platform stores translations alongside your content.
• Human translation services: professional translators or an agency translate and review content. Highest quality, highest cost, and usually combined with one of the methods above.
• Browser translation or a JavaScript widget: the visitor's browser translates the page on the same URL. Free, but translated pages are not indexed and quality is not controlled.

Quality

Machine translation, AI, or human translation?

Modern machine and AI translation is good enough for most website copy, especially with a glossary that fixes brand and product terms. Human translation is still worth paying for on legal pages, marketing headlines, and the pages that drive the most revenue. Most sites combine them: machine translation for coverage, human review where it matters.

• Use a glossary so product names and key terms translate consistently.
• Review high-traffic and high-revenue pages with a fluent speaker.
• Verrouiller les traductions révisées afin que les mises à jour automatiques ne les écrasent pas.
• Keep translating new and changed content after launch.

Example

How to translate a website into Spanish

Spanish is one of the most common first languages to add. The same steps apply to any language: decide the audience, give the language its own URLs, translate everything search engines read, and tell search engines how the versions relate.

• Choose the audience: es for all Spanish speakers, or es-MX and es-ES if Mexico and Spain need different wording or prices.
• Give Spanish its own URLs, such as example.com/es/pricing.
• Translate the page, the metadata, the alt text, and the slug where your routing supports it, using the terms Spanish searchers actually use.
• Add reciprocal hreflang tags (en, es, and x-default) and a self-canonical on each page.
• Add the Spanish URLs to your sitemap and a Spanish option to your language switcher.
• Ask a fluent speaker to review the home, pricing, and product pages.

<!-- https://example.com/es/pricing -->
<html lang="es">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/es/pricing" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/pricing" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://example.com/es/pricing" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/pricing" />

Cost

How much does website translation cost?

Website translation cost is driven by the number of words on your site multiplied by the number of languages. Human translation services usually charge per word, so a large site in several languages quickly adds up. Website translators and SDKs charge a monthly plan sized by words and languages, and add human review only where you choose. Count your words first, then compare quotes on the same basis.

• Count the words on your site, including product and blog pages.
• Multiply by the number of target languages.
• Decide which pages need human review and which can use machine translation.
• Budget for new and changed content each month, not just the first translation.

SEO

Make translated pages rank

A translation only brings search traffic if search engines can crawl it. Each language needs its own URL that returns translated HTML from the server, a self-referencing canonical, reciprocal hreflang links, and a sitemap entry. Translated pages are not duplicate content when these signals are correct.

• One URL per language, never language switching on a single URL.
• Server-rendered translated HTML, not text swapped in by JavaScript.
• Translated titles, descriptions, and slugs based on local keywords.
• Hreflang and canonical tags that agree, checked after each release.