Concepts and questions
What is a multilingual website?
By definition, a multilingual website is a website that provides content in more than one language, for example, English, French and German. In some cases only a few sections of the website need to be available in more than a language. For an example of some multilingual websites review the following:
- www.europa.eu
- www.un.org
- www.oas.org
Why a multilingual website? Who needs one?
A company can have many reasons to develop a multilingual website:
- Desire to get into new markets. This makes sense for companies that are not internationally established yet but plan to break into new markets.
- The need to provide products and services information to international clients. In this case the company is already a player in the international market and hence needs to keep a communication channel with customers from different nationalities.
- The need to provide informative content in many different languages. Ie.: media companies
- Many countries have more than one official language, therefore providing content and information in the differente languages is a need.
Besides that, we can cite governmental institutions, public services, NGOs, tourism related companies, language schools, and many other business activities that can take advantage of a multlingual website. In some cases there are even legal obligations.
However, this is just a corporate view. With the popularization of internet, small companies and even bloggers can take advantage of a multilingual website. Providing content in different languages may multiply significantly the site or blog traffic and potencially increase their results.
Read also:
Alternatives to implement a multilingual website
