Website localisation into Brazilian Portuguese
- Fabio Said offers professional website localisation of German- and English-language websites into Portuguese for Brazil, especially for European law firms and small-sized companies.
- Fabio Sais is a fully qualified Brazilian Portuguese translator and intercultural specialist well-familiarised with the language and mindset of Brazilians.
- Besides having translation qualifications, Fabio Said has acquired solid knowledge of HTML/XML, CSS and PHP through many years of experience in maintaining and editing WordPress websites.
Table of Contents
Website localisation: texts as Word files
The easiest and most cost-effective method of starting a localisation project is sending your website as Word files to the translator. It’s easy because after the translation is completed you can give the translated text to a professional webmaster who would be responsible for building your multilingual website. With this method, the translator only has access to the actual texts to be translated, not to the website’s backend. And it is cost-effective because working with Word files demands a lot less effort than with complex web page files.
In my experience, this can only work under the following circumstances:
- You have a webmaster.
- You know exactly which pieces of content in your website are relevant to your Brazilian target group and should be translated into Brazilian Portuguese.
- In your source file to be translated, you give instructions about which content goes in which website section (like this: “Text for home page”, “Text for buttons”, “Text for navigation” etc.).
- The translator sends you the translated text as a Word file in two columns: left side with the German original text, right side with the translation into Brazilian Portuguese. This way, your webmaster will have no problem building your multilingual website.
If needed, the translator can check the live version of your finalised Portuguese-language website in order to ensure that, for example, Portuguese special characters are placed correctly, that all other visual elements are well presented and – more importantly – that somebody in/from Brazil would have no problem navigating your website.
Website localisation: texts as Excel files
Localising with Excel files is equivalent to localising with Word files in terms of time spent, costs and processes. Some customers seem to think of Excel as a very good tool for all texts that need to be divided into columns. However, if you decide for Excel, please consider the following disadvantages:
First of all, Excel is not a word processor, but a calculation tool. This means that it’s cumbersome to write texts in Excel. For instance, one always has to check the width and length of each cell so that everything can be visualised and printed correctly.
And secondly, some things that work perfectly well in Word don’t work in Excel. For example: quotation marks are not shown correctly. Vertical quotation marks don’t look as good as standard, curly quotation marks.
Fabio Said will be glad to translate your website on the basis of an Excel spreadsheet. However, this method increases the probability of creating formatting issues in your multilingual website later on.
Website made available as HTML/XML/PHP files
I can also translate your website into Brazilian Portuguese on the basis of source files in the HTML, XML, PHP or similar formats. However, this method involves a higher cost for you, because of the additional time and effort needed to deal with more complex file formats.
For example, such file formats usually don’t allow a direct word count, as they include a lot of untranslatable code characters other than translatable text. In the methods described above, on the other hand, a translator only has to deal with the translatable text and not with the website code.
Please note:
As a rule of thumb, making a price quotation on the basis of a downloaded website is not recommended. If the translator has to download the website himself, there’s a risk that dynamic pages or other dynamically generated content are unintentionally not included in the price quotation. It’s much safer to send the files to the translator by email. Please do so using the Online Assistance tool.
International SEO
A special form of website localisation is international SEO. This is not just about translating and adapting a website’s content for a Brazilian target group, but also about optimising it for internet search engines. This way, your Brazilian website visitors will find your localised website faster and become new leads more easily. You can count on Fabio Said for your international SEO needs as well.
SEO translator turned SEO expert
Fabio Said is optimally qualified for your international SEO assignment. He has attended continuing education seminars on search engine optimisation and a special workshop on international SEO. In addition, he has had extensive experience doing SEO for his own websites and often exchanges ideas with the SEO community.