{"id":2214,"date":"2019-12-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motionpoint.com\/?post_type=blog&p=2214"},"modified":"2019-12-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T00:00:00","slug":"diy-portal-translation-projects-pose-risks-to-growing-companies","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.motionpoint.com\/blog\/diy-portal-translation-projects-pose-risks-to-growing-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018DIY\u2019 Portal Translation Projects Pose Risks to Growing Companies"},"template":"","blog_categories":[10,9,107,15],"resource_categories":[27,28,37,34,30,24,35,26,23,32,22,31,17,29,18],"targeted_localized_audience":[],"document_categories":[],"class_list":["post-2214","blog","type-blog","status-publish","hentry","blog_categories-marketing-strategies-customer-experience","blog_categories-marketing-strategies","blog_categories-translation-technology","blog_categories-website-translation","resource_categories-industry-b2b-manufacturing","resource_categories-industry-b2c-manufacturing","resource_categories-content-type-blog-post","resource_categories-business-goal-brand-experience","resource_categories-business-goal","resource_categories-role-business-strategist","resource_categories-content-type","resource_categories-industry","resource_categories-role-marketer","resource_categories-business-goal-optimize-performance","resource_categories-role","resource_categories-business-goal-streamline-operations","resource_categories-topic","resource_categories-industry-travel","resource_categories-topic-website-translation"],"acf":{"blog_short_description":"Managing the complex processes of localizing customer portals often generates overwhelming costs and effort for in-house teams.","news_inline_styles":"","blog_video_id":"","article_body":"

Your multilingual customers want to manage their accounts, upgrade their services, review their wealth and health information and more within secure online experiences. <\/p>\n

These secure customer portals drive down customer service costs, increase company productivity and accelerate cross-sell and upsell opportunities.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not enough to offer the same monolingual portal to international and multilingual constituents. To provide a stellar CX that resonates and converts, companies must localize these experiences in their audience\u2019s preferred languages.<\/p>\n

Historically, localizing portals\u2014especially with in-house teams\u2014has been painful, complicated, and very costly. Read on to learn the challenges of taking on a portal localization<\/a> project in-house, and how to sidestep them completely with a different approach.<\/p>\n

Operational Risks and Complexities<\/h2>\n

Launching and operating multilingual portals requires more people, performing more tasks, than most companies realize. This leads to continuous effort and costs that go well beyond mere translation.<\/p>\n

In fact, portals are often more challenging to translate than traditional public-facing websites\u2014which are notoriously difficult to localize on their own\u2014because of the complex web applications, interactive functionality and dynamic technologies they use to present personalized experiences to users.<\/p>\n

Companies often consider localizing these experiences with in-house resources. For these teams, many tasks await \u2026 as well as many stages where workflows can break down. At a high level, in-house teams must:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Thoroughly compile content for translation, including text, images, multimedia, PDFs and more <\/li>\n
  2. Develop and manage translation and QA workflows <\/li>\n
  3. Send translatable content to in-house translators or offsite vendors <\/li>\n
  4. Own the process of getting that material translated quickly and accurately <\/li>\n
  5. Own the process of vetting the content for accuracy and brand consistency <\/li>\n
  6. Integrate the translated content into the multilingual \u201cinstance\u201d of the portal <\/li>\n
  7. Ensure the translated content fits seamlessly within established page templates <\/li>\n
  8. Manage the exponential growth of resources required when adding more languages <\/li>\n
  9. Follow this complex and costly process again and again,<\/i> every time you add or change content on your origin portal <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Technical Risks and Complexities<\/h2>\n

    Unfortunately, the challenges extend beyond the translation process for in-house teams. The technical aspects of the project can derail these projects for months, or sometimes over a year\u2014or so thoroughly, the projects are abandoned altogether.<\/p>\n

    Multilingual Portal Features<\/h3>\n

    Many third-party portal providers offer multilingual capabilities, but most fall short under the pressures of day-to-day portal translation<\/a>. These solutions usually shift all the complexity and ongoing effort\u2014including technical configuration, collecting translatable content, translation, and publication on the localized portal\u2014onto their customers. This increases risks and cost.<\/p>\n

    Legacy Systems and Disparate Coding Languages<\/h3>\n

    It\u2019s common for companies to use content databases that have been in use for many years (even decades!), or operate custom-built portals that leverage several coding languages or frameworks. Unforeseen compatibility issues often arise in these situations during the localization process.<\/p>\n

    Single-Page Applications<\/h3>\n

    Many portals use complex web applications, powered by Angular, React and other frameworks. Within the context of portal localization projects, it\u2019s extremely challenging to identify and export translatable text from these applications while also preserving their JavaScript framework logic. And once that content is localized, it must be then reintegrated back into the application.<\/p>\n

    Dynamic Content<\/h3>\n

    Many portals leverage AJAX calls that produce dynamic content that would not be seen \u201con the page\u201d and fed through either JSON or XML. For portal localization, translators must use sophisticated JSON and XML parsers to find this content. Ideally, it should also enable customers to select content elements that must be translated, and allow other text to simply pass through as untranslated.<\/p>\n

    Look for Effortless Solutions<\/h2>\n

    With so much at stake, look beyond in-house options for a portal translation solution built to handle the demands of content detection, translation, integration and coding in a timely and coordinated way. As you evaluate your options, consider your pain points\u2014and look for answers to these questions:<\/p>\n