Targeting Hispanics en los E.E.U.U.

Targeting Spanish speakers in the U.S. (Estados Unidos:E.E.U.U.) is a challenge. If you’re filtering by IP address to determine country and redirect people to the appropriate language you may miss out on giving Hispanics in the U.S. a Spanish language landing page.

A simple option is to direct people to sites that automate translation babelfish (babel.altavista.com) and www.google.com/language_tools that allow users to translate either blocks of text or entire websites with the click of a button.

Get it done quick and dirty. Two simple ways that can leave your content in a state of scrabble.

1. You can post a link to a pre translated page (like this blog in Spanish for example) going through google like the one below and pray for the best.
http://translate.google.com/translate
and then automatically append your variable info
?u=www.tjgill.com%2Fblog&langpair=en%7Ces&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

or

2. Babel Fish allows companies to display a link on their page in which users can simply click on a flag to have the website translated, as mentioned above this requires a leap of faith in the webware to accurately translate words but also meaning and context, not to mention targeted keyword phrases for Google. Then the question is what flag to choose for Spanish. Many hispanics in the U.S. are of mexican decent yet most sites use the Spanish Flag (spain). This can be alienating to your audience (Think of an American having to click on the Australian flag for English.)

You get what you pay for with tools, free being the cost and little being what you get. The return can be low at best and your site will not be optimized for Search Engine Marketing and you are likely to alienate visitors with your awkward sounding nonsensical sentences.

One of Microsoft best new efforts (in my opinion) is their live translator service which lines up two copies of web pages split screen and you can go through and analyze your site element by element, div by div and make sure your providing the best user experience to your non-english visitors.

Another problem with these tools is the liability involved in accurately translating a product description. In retail, if something translates differently because of a double meaning or different word arrangement, you could wind up with some very unhappy customers who thought their lawn mower also did carpet cleaning. Can you really be sure that your automated translation of a “Get the Yankees New Jersey” doesn’t actually mean that you are selling the Yankees new jerseys.