Tourism is one of the most important and lucrative industries in the world; in France, the most visited country in the world, it represents 7.1% of the GDP*. If you have a website dedicated to tourism, translating it into your customers’ languages is crucial. Find out what our professional team has to say about e-tourism translation.
The specificities of e-tourism translation
Tourism websites may have a variety of purposes. Some are purely informative, others are promotional and some are commercial sites. In any case, a multilingual translation is key if you want to establish your business on overseas markets.
Translating an e-tourism website involves both “localizing” and “internationalizing”.
These seemingly contradictory concepts are actually rather compatible. Internationalization, which consists of making a product compatible with customers from several countries, paves the way for localization, or the process of culturally and linguistically adapting the text to the target audience.
Finally, e-tourism websites often have temporary or seasonal offers, which means that content needs to be updated regularly. The same goes for their translations.
The challenges involved in e-tourism translation
Tourism content is often littered with cultural references that are specific to a certain country or destination. The translator needs to choose whether to adapt this content to the target audience or to retain it in its original form in order to take the reader on a journey to the destination through the text.
Place names or terms specific to a certain culture, such as a dance or a local dish, can often be left in their original language.
This linguistic strategy can be used as a marketing technique, to immerse readers in a new, exotic context, thus making them want to travel.
For example: “Samba the night away with a delicious caipirinha in hand…”»
Makes you want to get on the next plane to Rio, doesn’t it?
This technique is only effective when used wisely. The text must not be too foreign to the target audience’s culture, so that they are not totally lost when reading it. This is where translation and localization come into play. To find a happy medium between foreignization and localization, the translator must have impeccable knowledge of both languages and both cultures.
Tips for an effective e-tourism website translation
A successful tourism translation must be natural, localized and an effective sales tool. The translators who take on the translation of your website must therefore be both native speakers of the target language and specialists in marketing translation.
If you want to attract more customers to your e-tourism website, it may be wise to opt for:
- A SEO translation, which will improve your position in search engine results.
- A multilingual translation, so that you can reach as many markets as possible.
A successful marketing translation combined with good SEO will enable you to establish your business overseas and increase your conversion rate considerably.
Milega’s SEO and e-tourism translation experts will guide you through the multilingual translation process.
*Source: Direction Générale des Entreprises (DGE) – 2016 figures
