Two years ago you had an English version of your site built. The Dutch page says you open at nine. The English page still says eight. This morning someone was standing outside your door at five past eight.
That is the real problem with multilingual sites. Not the translation itself, but what happens to it afterwards.
Decide who the language is for
"International" is not an audience. A person is. The customer who rings your garage in Brussels and would rather speak French. The patient in Amsterdam who reads no Dutch but still wants an appointment. The shopper who speaks Arabic and wants to understand your price list before walking in.
You already have the data. Look back three months through your inbox and your phone: what language did people write and call in? If nobody got in touch in German, German is a project, not a need.
One extra language done properly beats three done halfway. A half-finished translation shows a visitor that you started and stopped, which reads worse than having only one language.
Translate the pages that produce work
Your pages fall into two groups: pages that lead to a call, a booking or a visit, and pages that are nice to have. Only the first group needs translating.
- Contact: address, phone number, opening hours, how to get there.
- What you do and what it costs.
- The one page that answers the question you get most often.
- The form itself, including the confirmation email.
- Menu, buttons and error messages.
News, blog and long background stories can stay in one language. A single line — "Our news is published in Dutch only" — is honest and costs you nothing.
Facts in one place, words per language
Opening hours, phone number, address, prices: those are facts. They belong in one place and should appear automatically in every language version. Only the words around them get translated.
In our experience, almost every site that has drifted apart got there this way: the facts were copied instead of shared, and then somebody changed one of the copies.
Ask whoever builds or maintains your site one question: if I change my opening hours, how many places do I have to type them? The answer should be one.
Four small choices that save a lot of trouble
Use clear addresses: /en/, /fr/, /nl/. Each language gets its own page that you can send to someone and that search engines can list.
Put the language switcher visibly at the top, with each language named in its own language: English, Nederlands, Français, العربية. No flags — a flag is a country, not a language.
Do not force people into a language based on their browser settings. Offer the other version, and remember what they choose. Nothing is more irritating than a site that keeps pushing you back into a language you cannot read.
Reply in the language people write in. A good French page is undone instantly by a Dutch automatic confirmation. And if you add Arabic: it reads right to left, so the whole layout mirrors, not just the text. Decide that before the design, not after.
The real cost is the second update
Launch is the cheap part. Then comes the question nobody asks in advance: who writes the new text, who checks the translation, and how long before it is live?
Machine translation is fine for a first draft. After that, have someone who actually speaks the language read it, especially prices, guarantees and anything inside a form. Agree a rhythm: a change is live in every language within a week. If you cannot keep that up, that is your signal that you have one language too many.
What to do this week
- Count, across three months of email and calls, which language people contacted you in.
- Open every language version of your site side by side and compare hours, phone number and prices. Any mismatch gets fixed today.
- Pick one language and list the five pages that need it. Five, not fifty.
Not sure whether one extra language is enough, or how much upkeep it adds? At ITSysPro we build and maintain sites in Dutch, English, French and Arabic, and we are happy to think it through with you without any obligation.