Translation is it worth it?

**grynge** · July 8th, 2011, 3:01 AM

I have a font site and about 1/3rd of the traffic is from india.

I was wondering would it be worth my while to have the site translated for that traffic?
The site is very repetitive so I would only need to get a small amount translated.

As far as I have been able to tell most other sites in the niche don't offer translated pages either.

Has anyone had any success with translated pages does it increase traffic?
What languages would be worth translating in to?

Now as I know very little about India I have no idea what is the most common language, I did notice their is more than 1 common dialect.

**Kay** · July 8th, 2011, 4:46 AM

I've lived in India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) for many years and have found that all the educated people speak English. So I wouldn't bother translating it. Also remember that India has numerous languages and they tend to use English as a means to communicate between the regions. I would advise against trying to translate your content into Hindi or any of the other numerous languages in use.

If I was interested in doing foreign language content, I'd be looking at the German market.

**Kay** · July 8th, 2011, 4:54 AM

PS: Here a quote from the answers to a quickie trivia quiz we had on our expat site.

How many official languages does India have?

This depends on the definition you choose to apply!
Strictly speaking, nationally there are just two: Standard Hindi and (as a secondary official language) English. However, the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution currently (June 2011) recognises a further 21 languages as official regional languages, 15 of which can be seen on the back of Indian banknotes – so arguably there are 23 in total.

**Clinton** · July 8th, 2011, 5:07 AM

It's true that most educated people speak English (or Indlish

). And Hindi is the national language. But Hindi is more of a Northern belt language. Southern states have always been opposed to Hindi being the national language and many people in southern states are very anti-Hindi. There were numerous riots against Hindi's national status. People in Tamil Nadu (language: Tamil) and Andhra Pradesh (Telugu) are particularly anti-Hindi. They'll watch Hindi movies but if you talk to them in Hindi in rural Tamil Nadu some will even turn and just walk away!

I speak Telugu fluently (and a bit of Tamil). Telugu is the third most spoken language in India after Hindi and Bengali.

TBH, I wouldn't worry about translation. Unlike with China, the Indians most likely to use the web understand English. If you do want to translate, do just Hindi. Ajeet on these boards is an expert in English to Hindi translation and I have used his (paid) services for that in the past.

**grynge** · July 8th, 2011, 5:51 AM

The reason I am thinking about it, is that there has been about 370 unique translations using google another 100 or so using babel so far this month. I will have to dig a bit deeper into the stats to see what they are translating it to, but I was wondering, if so many are doing it then maybe I should think about it.