Internationalisation of a website
Internationalisation (i18n) is the process of designing and developing a website to support multiple languages and cultural conventions. It allows the website to be accessible to a global audience and ensures that the content of the website is presented in a way that is correct and appropriate for each individual user.
Why is it a good practice?
Internationalising a website is considered a good practice because it expands the user audience beyond local borders to a global audience. It is more effective than automatic text translation because it shows respect and awareness of cultural differences, allowing you to make changes that better suit the target culture and language. The advantages of internationalising a website rather than letting translation services automatically translate the text include:
- avoiding misunderstandings due to incorrect translation models, leaving the user with a better understanding of the website
- improving the website's reputation with both users and search engines
- increasing compliance with accessibility standards
What to keep in mind when internationalising a website
When internationalising a website, it is important to understand and keep in mind that each international version of a website behaves as a separate entity linked to the main domain. This means that any changes made to the content of one international version of the website will not automatically be reflected on all others. There are other useful things to keep in mind when internationalising a website
- consider the differences between the target audiences of all the different international versions of your website
- review all the content of your website (including multimedia files) and determine which elements need to be translated
- be aware of the different legal requirements that need to be specified in different parts of the world for each international version of your website
As in all major parts of RevasOS, you should only focus on the content, as most technical aspects will be handled by the system.
Caution
All international versions of the website will require content optimisation. We recommend reading our guide on how to optimise content.