[Sigia-l] Translating Spanish Content on the Web

[Christine Freeman]

I don't know specifically about Spanish translation for the Web, but here
are a few observations from the print world that you may find useful:

1.  Generally speaking, what you call "transcreation" works better for
information; word-for-word translation is difficult to justify even for
material in which each word has significance, such as poetry.

2.  Writing the same content in Spanish tends to require about 15 percent
more space than writing the same content in English. That's just a feature
of the language. So, be prepared; think this through ahead of time, where
the length of the text in page elements, or the length of pages themselves,
will matter.

Christine Freeman
Clarity in Communication
freepress at earthlink.net
www.cfreelance.com
650-322-1135

From: courtney.crowell at wachovia.com
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:10:32 -0500
Subject: [Sigia-l] Translating Spanish Content on the Web

1) Are there accepted standards/best practices regarding translating and
integrating Spanish content on the web from one language to another? To
what degree is word for word translation vs. "transcreation" (creating
appropriate content in a culturally sensitive context) considered the best
way to approach providing multilingual content on the web?
3) Is there any information on approaching information architecture design
for a Spanish language site? Are there cultural differences that will
influence customer classification/organization expectations?

~Courtney Crowell