Hi WordLovers and happy New Year! It is
never too late to wish you all the fun you can and a wonderful 2017 ahead!
I hope you enjoyed your Christmas holidays
as much as I did and that you are finally back to work full of enthusiasm and
positive energy.
An article that I recently wrote as guest
blogger was published during Christmas holidays by SDL Translation Zone and I
know you enjoyed it since it gained such a massive amount of likes! So thank you soo
much for making my post great! If you didn’t read it yet, the article is still
available online:
4 ways a translator can make your website awesome
If you are too lazy, you can read the summary below.
Terminology and UI
Translating the User Interface (UI) of a
website would appear to be an easy task. If you compare it to a normal
translation project, you would think one only has to deal with a small bunch of
words. This is where you would be mistaken – translating website UI is far more
complex than it seems.
UI is the real and most interactive part of
the website. It must be clear and intuitive; the users must immediately know
how to interact with the website and how to find what they need. Wrong wording
choices may have a devastating effect. In website UI, terminology is
particularly important because UI terms are operational components of the websites
themselves.
The speed with which a user can make
decisions and the efficiency of browsing a website depends on how effective the
chosen terms are. UI terminology is crucial, as it provides the most
significant information for the user (e.g. login, payment, donate, cancel etc.)
The user does not want to deliberate on how to complete a registration or how
to transfer their money online. They need time-efficient procedures, which
depend on the accuracy of the used terms.
How to improve the terminology of a website
Terminology is a resource made of
information units that can improve the performance and effectiveness of a broad
range of language and usability-related applications of websites, which is a separate
issue from translation.
A “terminological makeover” might be needed
when inconsistencies throughout the content are spotted. It might depend on the
content being written by different editors, thus causing the website to suffer
from a lack of uniformity in style and tone and consequently failing to express
a clear message. In such case, you need to go through the whole content and
review and replace inconsistent terms with the ones provided by the client.
A terminological makeover of the content
might also be needed because the company or institution might want to stress
its identity through a precise use of terms while simultaneously improving its
visibility. This can be quite challenging at times.
When trying to improve a website’s
visibility, you have to be acquainted with the topic and find out to what
extent the terminology used can work in the informal web environment. If one
works on a website for expert audiences, it is important to ensure the
unambiguous understanding of the text by using the terms provided by the
client.
Read the full article on:
When the website is up and running, it is
vital to use words that non-specialists use to increase visibility. The wording
has to be chosen with the reader in mind; words and expressions have to be
understood even by the occasional visitor, and they have to match the ones that
are being typed in search engines.
I use Google search
or the keyword tool on Google AdWords to identify and understand the most
popular search terms in a given field, as well as to see what words people are
typing in search engines. When search engines do not provide adequate
solutions, I have to consult relevant websites to collect search-friendly
keywords that users search on key elements of website including title,
meta-description, header tags, alt keywords of images, category, etc.
Website content should be search engine
optimized to communicate the right target, improve ranking on Search Engine
Result Pages (SERPs), drive traffic, increase awareness in search engines, and
improve website visibility in organic (unpaid) search engine results.
It does not take a specific certification or
20 years’ worth of experience to make web content search engine-friendly. It
takes very little effort, but the impact of it, or rather the impact from the
lack of it, is huge.
Glossaries also are very helpful, as they
provide readers with explanatory information. On website glossaries, users can
find the meaning of corporate/institutional terminology at a passing glance.
Those glossaries not only cover an explicate function, but also improve the SEO
of the websites, in being descriptive keywords for search engines to index.
Another solution is to include the layman’s
terms in the metadata for the webpage so that users are more likely to find the
page via search engines.
