The Best Website Localization Services

The first rule of entering new markets is translating your website into your target audience’s native language. But the work doesn’t stop there: to provide them with high-quality user experience, you’ll need to localize your website content.

No need to worry – here, we’ll walk you through the website localization process. Then, we’ll briefly discuss the website localization services out there. Finally, we’ll wrap up by exploring how you can use Weglot, our no-code website translation software, to quickly and accurately create a multilingual website in tandem with a website localization service.  

Note: Ready to translate your website into its new language? Skip the article and start your free trial.

The Best Website Localization Services

Let’s take a look at 6 of the best website localization providers that cater to different content management systems. In fact, many of our top-performing clients use these services in tandem with Weglot to bring a fully translated and localized website to their customers!

1. Lionbridge

Lionbridge is a leading website localization agency primarily targeted towards enterprises, offering a diverse range of services such as technical writing, digital marketing, and functional quality assurance. Most notably, their services are comprehensive: video and software localization, multilingual SEO and digital marketing, website localization, and many more.

With over 25 years of experience, they support more than 350 languages, making it easy to add multilingual functionality to your website. Over 6,000 employees operate in more than 5,000 cities worldwide.

Pros:

• Comprehensive localization across various formats.
• Strong reputation with extensive language support.

Cons:

• Primarily focused on enterprise-level clients, which may not suit smaller businesses.

Key features:

• Project preparation: They collaborate with you to understand business needs and target languages, creating a personalized localization plan.
• Execution: Content is distributed to qualified linguists who are informed of your specific requirements.
• Quality assurance: A separate team reviews the localized content to ensure cultural relevance and accuracy before final approval.

Benefits:

Streamlined processes improve project management efficiency and deliver high-quality localized content, ensuring that your brand’s message connects with diverse audiences.

2. RWS

RWS is one of the largest website localization providers globally, with over 60 years of experience. They boast a team of more than 7,500 experts, freelance translators, and specialized providers in 160 countries, offering tailored expertise for effective content localization.

RWS can directly translate your content into another language, or work with a first layer of machine translation and post-edit the output. They also have specialists with subject-matter expertise, useful for translating content that needs industry-specific knowledge.

Another important aspect of localization that the service offers is transcreation or adapting a piece of content’s style, design, and text to reflect a target audience’s cultural background.   RWS offers extensive global reach with specialized industry knowledge.

Pros:

• Extensive industry-specific expertise ensures high-quality localization.
• Advanced technology integration enhances efficiency and project management.

Cons:

• Can be costly for smaller projects, potentially limiting accessibility for some businesses.

Key features:

• Strategic consultation: RWS provides guidance for managing your entire content ecosystem, simplifying the localization process.
• Transcreation services: They adapt content style, design, and text to reflect target audiences’ cultural backgrounds, ensuring relevance and engagement.

Benefits:

Tailored strategies significantly improve engagement and localization effectiveness across various markets. By leveraging their extensive resources and expertise, RWS helps businesses connect with diverse audiences while maintaining high standards of quality and cultural sensitivity in their localized content.

3. Alconost

Alconost specializes in the localization of games, software, websites, and apps, having successfully localized over 1,500 projects, including TikTok into 40 languages.

Pros:

• Expertise in software and game localization ensures high-quality results.
• Offers flexibility with self-service options for clients.

Cons:

• Limited language support for some services compared to larger providers.

Key features:

• Full-cycle localization service: Provides comprehensive management of the entire localization process, from start to finish.
• Nitro API integration: Automates the localization process by delivering translations directly to your CMS, streamlining updates.

Benefits:

A personalized website localization service guarantees smooth workflows and continuous updates as your needs evolve. Alconost assigns a dedicated localization manager to each client, ensuring that the translation process is efficient and that content is automatically added and updated as changes occur on the original website. This approach keeps your content updated without the need for continual manual involvement.

4. Acclaro

Acclaro is a website translation agency that helps businesses scale into new markets through various specializations, including continuous software localization, global marketing, multimedia production, and interpretation.

Pros:

• Focuses on scaling businesses internationally, providing tailored strategies.
• Expertise in multimedia localization enhances content delivery across platforms.

Cons:

• Higher costs associated with comprehensive quality assurance processes may deter smaller businesses.

Key features:

• Data-driven insights: Utilizes analytics to inform project management strategies and optimize workflows.
• Transcreation specialization: Adapts content to reflect the language preferences of local audiences, for cultural relevance and better understanding.

Benefits:

Acclaro accelerates market entry while maintaining high-quality standards for localized content. By integrating advanced technologies such as machine translation and automation, they ensure a comprehensive and efficient localization process. Their commitment to continuous improvement helps businesses launch multilingual websites quickly, ensuring that content remains relevant and engaging for diverse audiences as they expand into new regions.

5. e2f

e2f is a data-science-driven website localization provider that delivers content in over 200 languages and dialects. Established in 2004, they use data science teams to improve their processes and support clients in launching conversational AI, machine learning, and more.

Pros:

• Their data science-driven approach significantly improves localization accuracy, ensuring high-quality results.

Cons:

• Complex projects may require more time due to the thorough data analysis processes involved.

Key features:

• Continuous localization services: Offers a wide range of services including continuous translation, human translation, content review, glossary creation, and machine translation post-editing to ensure ongoing updates and improvements.

Benefits:

e2f provides real-time quality monitoring that detects and flags issues automatically, enabling teams to review and correct translations efficiently. They also supply substantive quality reports, including recommendations and resolutions, to help clients achieve their project goals. This commitment to high-quality data collection and analysis boosts the overall effectiveness of their localization efforts.

6. Acolad

Acolad is one of the top providers of website localization in the world, boasting over 30 years of experience and a vast network of linguists available in every language needed. Acolad serves over 25,000 clients globally and has extensive industry experience.

Pros:

• Their extensive experience across various industries enhances credibility and ensures high-quality localization.

Cons:

• Less flexibility for smaller projects due to their large-scale operations may limit accessibility for some businesses.

Key features:

• Comprehensive localization strategy development: Acolad collaborates with clients to tailor localization approaches based on specific needs, ensuring that websites are designed to function effectively in multiple languages.

Benefits:

Acolad optimizes websites for various languages while adhering to accessibility standards, ensuring inclusivity for all users. They also offer flexible delivery options, providing translations directly through your CMS and placing content in the appropriate locations. This compatibility with multilingual plugins allows for integration into existing workflows, helping businesses connect more deeply with their target audiences and maximize SEO efforts worldwide.

How to Choose a Website Localization Service

Not sure where to start with localization? Don’t fret – a proper localization service provider will evaluate your needs, create a plan to help you achieve your localization objectives, and guide you through it. You won’t have to figure out anything by yourself, especially if you’re unfamiliar with your new target market.

Here are 4 tips to help you choose a website localization service that best fits your needs:

Choose a Website Localization Service With Certifications and Accreditations

A localization project takes a lot of work and expertise, so you’ll want to ensure that the people you’re working with have the experience and certification to back them up. For instance, they should at least have the standard ISO 9001 certificate, which guarantees that the service provider has the capability and dedication to meet your specifications.

Find Out If They Have Offices in Your Target Markets

If you’re a company based in the United States hoping to enter the French market, you’ll want to work with a website localization service with an office in both countries. That way, your teams can easily coordinate with your assigned localization manager and you won’t be hindered by timezone differences.

Determine If They Have the Skills and Expertise for Niche Localization Projects

If you work in an especially elaborate or technical field, find a highly specialized localization service with proficiency in your niche. They’ll understand the different contexts and nuances in your website content and know the right way to translate a phrase that a regular translator or linguist may misinterpret.

Look For Customer Testimonials and Proofs of Success

A website localization service can promise you multilingual success and more, but to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth, look up customer testimonials. If you can find happy clients with a similar profile as you, such as the industry, nature of the project, and company size, you’ll have found a winner.

Why a Website Localization Service and Weglot is the Path to International Success

Using a website localization service is great for optimizing your site for your international audiences. However, you may want to make small changes yourself and push your site live, conserve your workflow, and have more control over your translation process.

The good news? You can have both by choosing a website localization service that best fits your needs and integrating it with Weglot.

Since Weglot is compatible with all technologies, you can use it with whatever service and use our many integrations for a seamless workflow. Any changes you make are automatically translated, and you can instantly update those translations with those supplied by your chosen localization service.

Additionally, since Weglot is designed to follow multilingual SEO best practices, you won’t have to worry about adapting your content to ensure maximum visibility on search engines.

Next Steps: Translate Your Site to Start Website Localization

The first step of website localization is translation. By translating your site, you expand your site’s reach.

Weglot can translate your entire site within minutes. If necessary, you and your team of translators can access your translations without downloading or extracting any files. And if you want someone to review your translated content, but you don’t have translators, then you can order translation services directly through Weglot.

Plus, Weglot translates your site following the best practices of multilingual SEO to help you increase the size of your audience. Not only that, but on top of localization, it also makes it even easier to internationalize your localized website. How? By automatically adding hreflang tags, adapting your site architecture to subdomains or subdirectories, accommodating text expansion and contraction, and more.

Start your free trial today.

FAQs

What is the Difference Between Localization Services and Translation Services?

Localization services involve adapting content to meet the cultural, linguistic, and contextual needs of a specific audience, while translation services focus solely on converting text from one language to another.

What are the Key Components of Localization?

Localization involves several components to ensure content is culturally relevant and user-friendly. These include adapting content to fit local preferences, modifying images to align with cultural norms, adjusting date formats and numerics for clarity, and refining design elements to enhance usability. Additionally, UI/UX considerations are essential for a great user experience.