Why Linguistic Testing is Essential in Website Localization

What is linguistic testing? Is it worth spending time on it? How to measure the result and what to do with it afterwards?

Clients applying for localization services for the first time, often ask similar questions.

Let’s start from the beginning.

A couple of words about how to translate using Weglot

Website localization always starts with proper tool selection. If you decided to translate a website on your own, without engaging a translation company, then the best solution for you is to translate with Weglot platform.

It enables to do both manual and automatic translation without having any technical knowledge and skills.

This application is easy to install. It is compatible with almost all website developers and CMS. That means, in Weglot you can translate WordPress, Spotify and other websites.

Opera – alternative to translate your website

Opera is one of the safest browsers in the world. Using a special add-in in Opera, you can easily translate a website into popular languages. To do this, you should find Google Translate add-in in the menu and add it to the browser.

Read also: How Much Does Localization Cost

What is linguistic testing

Linguistic testing is checking of a localized product on translation accuracy, grammatical correctness and proper text display in strings, windows and buttons.

Regardless of the method you have chosen for website translation — on your own or with the help of a translation company — no one is secured from mistakes. The mistakes may occur due to machine translation features, low qualification of a translator, lack of context or due to specialized topic of a text.

Concerning text display mistakes, they mostly happen due to different words, phrases and sentences length in different languages. The developer prepared a window for a specific text volume, but text became longer after translation. As a result, the text “crawls” over the picture or disappears.

Mostly such problems occur during localization into languages that have text direction different from the source — like in Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and others.

A separate group of mistakes is linguistic, i.e. spelling, grammatical, punctuation mistakes. If you do not find and correct them from the beginning, you will have to blush from embarrassment, listening to negative comments and feedback from users. And this definitely will not add to your reputation and product popularity.

Read also: How to translate a website and avoid mistakes

How does linguistic testing work?

Qualified translators-testers work on the process. They surely know where mistakes usually hide, how to find and to correct them.

1. After localization, a website undergoes checking by testers, the task explains where exact texts can be found.
2. Testers look through all windows, screens, sections thoroughly, verifying availability of mistakes.
3. In case of finding mistakes or bugs, a tester makes amendments to the translation file and notes the mistake in the bug list.
4. If the mistake is a “cosmetic” one, that is related to incorrect text display due to its length, translators or native speakers select a shorter translation analogue. If this is impossible, programmers from the developer’s side amend the interface — change the size of a window or a string.

What would happen if you ignore linguistic testing?

In case of localization of a business card website, you will spoil your reputation as this is the face of your company.

If mistakes occur in an online store, you may lose clients. Could a seller have credibility if there is chaos in his “shop window”?

By skipping localization testing, you can suffer from serious negative consequences. Thus, do not ignore linguistic testing — take care of your clients. And they will come back to you.

Read also: How to localize a website properly