One website, many languages: translation, checking and search

Selling in more than one country usually means a website in more than one language. AI has made the translation itself much cheaper. With some planning, each language version reads well and shows up in local search.

What AI translation does well

Current AI translation handles most business text well: service descriptions, product details, FAQs, contact pages. It keeps the meaning, writes fluent sentences and follows instructions about tone, so you can ask for a plain, friendly register or a formal one. It is also fast, which makes it practical to keep several language versions in step when you change a price or add a service.

It works best with context: who the readers are, what the company does, which terms must stay fixed. A short glossary of product names and key terms keeps each thing under one name across the whole site.

Where a native speaker still checks

AI output can read fluently and still need corrections that a native speaker is best placed to spot. A native speaker’s time pays off most in these places:

• Headlines and calls to action. Short phrases carry the most weight and have the least context, so each word choice needs to fit exactly.
• Industry terms. The dictionary word and the word your customers actually use often differ.
• Legal and pricing text. Terms of sale, warranties, VAT wording and anything that creates an obligation. Have someone qualified check these.
• Tone and cultural fit. Forms of address, humour, and how direct a sales message can be all vary between markets.
• Numbers, dates and units. Decimal separators, date order and currency formats.

Reviewing a translated page takes far less time than writing it from scratch, so this step is affordable even for a small site.

How each language version gets found

Search engines need to understand that a page exists in several versions and which one to show to whom.

Give each language its own address. Use a separate URL for each version, for example example.com/en/services/ and example.com/lv/pakalpojumi/. Search engines generally index one version per URL. If a cookie or a script switches the language on a single address, they may see only one of the versions. With its own address, every language version can be indexed and found.

Link the versions with hreflang. hreflang annotations tell search engines that pages are translations of each other and which language, and optionally which country, each one is for. Each version should list all the others and itself. This helps the right version appear in each country’s results. hreflang matches versions to audiences; ranking is a separate matter.

Research search terms in each language. People in different countries search differently. A translated keyword can be correct and still differ from the phrase people actually type. Find out what local customers actually search for, and use those words in page titles, headings and addresses.

Translate the details too. Page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text, URL slugs and structured data should all be in the page’s language. These small fields deserve attention, because titles and descriptions are what people see in search results.

A sensible order of work

Decide the languages and the URL structure before the build starts. Then agree on a glossary, translate with AI using that context, and have a native speaker review headlines, key terms and legal text. Finally, check local search terms, adjust titles and headings, and add hreflang, making sure every version points to the others.

Our Website development service covers this whole process, with texts prepared with AI help and checked so they read naturally for each audience.