Evaluate Website Translation by Calculating the Total Cost of Ownership
Understanding how to evaluate translation costs is crucial for maximizing your investment. Depending on your industry, where you are in the translation lifecycle and how easily you can tangibly track returns to your website, you might need to evaluate what solution is best for you by using either a Return on Investment (ROI) or Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) methodology.
Total Cost of Ownership Evaluation
In industries where the impact of website translation is harder to measure, as it is with financial services, healthcare providers, or government agencies, calculating the total cost of ownership is the most efficient strategy to understanding which website translation approach is best for your organization. This tends to be even more true when doing a website translation project for the first time.
In industries where the impact of website translation is harder to measure, as it is with financial services, healthcare providers, or government agencies, calculating the total cost of ownership is the most efficient strategy to understanding which website translation approach is best for your organization. This tends to be even more true when doing a website translation project for the first time.
For example, a credit union may translate its website into Spanish to better serve and attract the US Hispanic population in their region. At that moment, Spanish speakers will be able to understand the different services the credit union offers in their preferred language. If interested, they may choose to visit the credit union's location. In this case, the website was crucial to generating a walk-in appointment. However, attributing the website's translated experience to a walk-in appointment is difficult to calculate.
Here is another example, a hospital translates their website, and someone is sold on their services, but a patient won't always transact on that website until after the service has been provided. Similarly, the website informed the patient about the hospital's services, but since the patient paid after the service was provided, it is hard to attribute the service to the translated website.
Moreover, hospitals may also need to translate patient information, consent forms, and medical records into multiple languages to ensure patient safety and compliance with regulations. The benefits of these translations are less about direct financial returns and more about avoiding legal issues, improving patient outcomes, and enhancing overall service quality.
Interestingly, industries that benefit from a TCO evaluation tend to be the ones that require higher translation quality, which tends to be more costly. Mistranslating financial, medical or government information with AI could lead to legal repercussions and large fines.
That is why, in cases like these the TCO approach, which includes initial translation costs and ongoing expenses for updates and maintenance, provides a more comprehensive strategy to estimate the investment required.
Return on Investment Evaluation
For organizations where the impact of website translation is easier to measure, such as in e-commerce, travel and hospitality, technology or manufacturing, focusing on ROI is often a more practical approach - but not always. However, it's easier for online retailers like Amazon to directly correlate website translation efforts with increased sales in international markets when the transaction happens within the translated website. Clearly tracking metrics such as conversion rates, average order value, and customer lifetime value can provide a clear picture of the ROI for translation investments.
Calculating Cost of Ownership: MotionPoint vs. Hiring Internal Staff
Opting for MotionPoint's translation platform can significantly reduce expenses compared to hiring internal staff. Internal translation teams often require substantial investment in recruitment, training, and ongoing salaries. Additionally, the overhead costs associated with managing an in-house team, like adding technology to manage the process and building new standard operating procedures, can compound costs even further.
Staffing full-time employees for translation typically means hiring translators, project managers, quality assurance specialists, and localization engineers. Each role demands specific expertise and continuous professional development, which further adds to the cost.
Estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO) for internal website translation services can be illustrated by calculating the number of full-time employees. For instance, if a company employs a full-time translator or LSP (language service provider) and at least one project manager, the combined salaries, benefits, and overhead costs for these employees can easily exceed $100,000 annually.
MotionPoint's MP Concierge can be 5 to 10 times less costly than that. It significantly reduces TCO by leveraging advanced automation and expert translation services, eliminating the need for in-house staff or additional technology costs.
MP Concierge already has everything you need built-in and handles the entire translation process for you. From initial content extraction to final deployment, it provides a seamless, cost-effective solution that allows companies to reallocate their internal resources to other strategic initiatives. This includes Adaptive Translation, designed to deliver AI-driven machine translations that adapt to the specific brand of your website to ultimately reduce the need for expensive human post-edit review.
Browser-Based, Low-Cost Solutions
Browser-based, quick solutions might appear to be a cost-effective option at first glance. However, the quality of translations produced by such solutions can be inconsistent, potentially harming your brand’s image in new markets, bad translation can cost millions of dollars in regulatory and compliance fees, and PR fixes especially with cultural mishaps.
These solutions can quickly translate websites, but they may not handle the web engineering, dynamic content and cultural nuances you need to set a proper brand image effectively. This leads to an experience that may fail to resonate with your target audience.
While they may save money upfront, the long-term impact on customer perception and engagement can negate these savings. However, it may be a good idea if you want to get hands-on experience fast. MotionPoint offers MP Express for customers that opt to go that route.
When translation quality is crucial, MotionPoint's MP Concierge is essential to avoid the costly PR fixes associated with translation errors. MP Concierge ensures accurate, culturally appropriate translations, safeguarding your brand's reputation and providing a more reliable, long-term solution.
Connector Solutions – Considering Maintenance Costs
Connector solutions, which can integrate with translation management systems and your website, offer a middle-ground option between full automation and manual translation.
A connector sends and receives translation work by connecting with freelance translators or LSPs. However, these solutions require ongoing maintenance and oversight. Its cost does not account for the work needed for your internal team to manage and assign translations from the connector to the LSP or freelancer you hire. The other issue is if you do not speak the language, it is hard for you to revise the translation quality and messaging for yourself. Additionally, there will be web engineering required to fix misalignment issues and other technical challenges caused by word-growth and dynamic content, this quickly leads to an unexpected log of development work for your internal teams.
Connecting your website to a freelance translator can cost around $0.10 to $0.30 per word, which can add up quickly depending on the volume of content.
Lastly, connectors may not offer the translation flexibility you require, as its business model requires it to charge you as much human translation as possible, since machine translation is much less expensive.
It’s crucial to factor in these potential costs when considering connector solutions, as the initial savings may be offset by long-term maintenance and operational costs.
The Translation Maturity Curve
Organizations at different stages of the translation maturity curve will have varying needs and challenges, guiding whether they should evaluate a website translation solution using a total cost of ownership calculation or a tangible ROI calculation.
Phase 1: Manual
Companies in the Manual phase are beginning their international expansion with low international maturity and unpredictable, ad-hoc translation processes. Prioritizing TCO is crucial to demonstrate immediate benefits and justify further investment. Especially when translation is not something your company has explored before.
Phase 2: Automated
In the Automated phase, businesses use basic translation automation tools and begin scaling translations to increase visibility. Focusing on TCO helps in tracking the initial traction gained in the marketplace and supports scaling efforts.
Phase 3: Hybrid
As international maturity grows, the Hybrid phase involves more comprehensive localization and defined processes for translation projects. A balance between TCO and ROI is beneficial to ensure both effective translation and sustainable growth.
Phase 4: Centralized
The Centralized phase is marked by well-established translated languages and a centralized entity managing ongoing translations. Optimizing ROI becomes essential as the focus shifts to maintaining efficiency and minimizing long-term costs through automated updates and continuous translation.
Phase 5: Expert
In the Expert phase, businesses have peak international maturity and may consider in-house translation teams. However, optimizing ROI is critical to manage hidden costs and avoid inefficiencies associated with in-house teams, ensuring the translation process remains profitable, cost-effective and timely.
Slutsats
For a more detailed analysis and to see how MotionPoint can specifically benefit your organization, get a free website translation diagnostic scorecard. This tool will help us evaluate your current translation needs based on your business goals to help you identify the best approach to solving website translation for you.