How to test multilingual web-sites

Many websites support more than one language. As companies expand their business to other countries, the need for multilingual sites also increases. After all, the more languages, the higher the chances of increasing the audience. In addition, multilingual resources can increase brand awareness, conversions and SEO ranking, which also affects overall revenue. However, what happens when users open a website in a language they don't know? Most likely, they will close it immediately and never come back. Therefore, multilingual sites today are a good way to go beyond your geography and make your business global, stay relevant and stay ahead of your competitors.

The site needs to be properly translated and adapted. Cultural aspects, navigation, ergonomics, etc. must be taken into account. This should be tailored to each specific technical environment (e.g. online payments with local banks). So, how to make sure that the resource is well translated and correctly corresponds to the local characteristics?

What do you need to know before testing multilingual sites?

Key factors to consider before testing a multilingual project:

1. Clear requirements from customers/stakeholders

It is important to get specific multilingual requirements. This allows you to create user scenarios that focus on these requirements and tests based on them.

2. Clearly understand business goals

In order to conduct quality testing, you need to know who the end users will be, in which market the site will work, what the site is intended for, etc. For example, a news website requires a lot of customization to meet localization needs, so content-related issues will be less important compared to design and layout. An online store that gives users the opportunity to browse the site in several languages will mostly have global content (for example, product descriptions), so the catalog will be translated at the stage of filling the site with content. However, testing product reviews will require a lot of translation checks as they will contain comments from local users written in their native language.

3. Explore the functionality of the site

Testing is better when the tester knows the functionality of the product, its features, strengths and weaknesses. Having maximum knowledge about the capabilities of the website will make it much easier to test the features of that website in different languages.

4. Site design

There are 2 options: the first –  the site has a single home page (single domain) and options to change the language. In this case, the design and layout of the various pages remain unchanged, which makes testing quite easy. The second is a site with a separate domain or URL, depending on the language or country. Sites like that require more time for testing, because the pages will have a different layout, different cultural implementation.

Tips for testing a multilingual website

Testing multilingual resources involves a number of risks and challenges. It is necessary to be quite attentive and understand the topic in order to provide the site with cultural aspects and at the same time not to lose quality. To begin with, you need to familiarize yourself with some features that you should pay attention to.

Tip 1: Prepare and use the necessary test environment

If a website is in English and German, for example, it is not enough to simply change the default browser language and run identical tests in both languages. In order to perform a realistic test, it is essential that the site is tested on two computers, i.e. one with an English operating system and the other with a German operating system.

Tip 2. Correct translations

Native speakers from the same region as users are usually the best resource for providing translations that are accurate in both meaning and context. Native speakers are professionals who use their native language and have a deep knowledge of their own culture. Otherwise, you will have to rely on automatic web translation. Then it is better to compare automatic translations from several sources before using them in a test.

Tip 3: Know and understand the website thoroughly

Most likely, the tester does not know all the languages that the website supports. Then it is better to be well aware of its functionality. First, you should perform tests in one version of the site several times. This will help to easily navigate in another language version. Or you will have to keep one version of the site open in another browser to understand how to act with the second language, which greatly slows down the workflow and reduces efficiency. 

Tip 4: Length of words

In different languages, the same words have different lengths. Text written in one language may take up more or less space on the page than in another language. Website design should take into account the different length of words used on the site. For example, the word  «Science» in German is «Die Wissenschaft». Therefore, it should be checked whether the word does not go beyond the boundaries of the element or, on the contrary, whether there is not too much free space left.

Depending on the content of the site, it is not always possible to adapt the design to all translations. Therefore, to fit into the space available on the page or element, you can replace the word with a synonym or increase/decrease the font.

Tip 5. The main language of the site

It is convenient for the user when the site determines the native language of the browser to automatically set it as the main one. This saves some time, but does not give a hundred percent result.

It is important to remember about users who can get to the «wrong» version of the site, for example, due to geolocation. The visitor may be physically on vacation in France, the site will automatically detect this and display the page in French. And the user is German and does not know how to read French. In such cases, it is better to provide an option to choose whether to translate the site.

Tip 6: Coding

Input data must be checked. Typically, multilingual sites store data in the UTF-8 Unicode encoding format. The site must have the ability to enter data in another language. The raw data should also be compared with its translation.

Tip 7: Cultural features

One of the main challenges in testing multilingual websites is the cultural specificity of each country. Many factors must be taken into account, such as:

• text direction (left to right, right to left or top to bottom);
• desirable (and undesirable) colors;
• address, date, time format;
• name display standards;
• format of greetings;
• punctuation;
• conversion of measure, currency and much more.

More detailed information about the peculiarities can be found in the article of our blog «Multilingual application testing. Locale»

Tip 8: Time zone

Site users can be not only abroad, but also in different time zones. Welcome messages, feedback, etc. should be adapted. This is especially true for events that have a time limit (for example, Black Friday discounts) or are tied to a certain holiday (Christmas greetings). The visitor may be somewhat confused by the greeting «Good morning» at 6 o'clock in the evening, and the inability to contact the chat operator (working hours fall on the user's night time). And a missed discount on a Black Friday can generally offend or outrage a potential buyer.

Globalizing websites is as difficult as it is demanding a significant investment of time and resources. The site is the face of the company, so the design and language of communication with visitors are of great importance. The correct approach to testing a multilingual resource, taking into account all the nuances and features, is vital for the success of the product.