A client asks for a quote to translate their website. They say it is about forty pages.
The export contains those forty pages plus navigation, buttons, form labels, validation messages, confirmation emails, metadata for every page, a legal section, a blog archive and several hundred product descriptions. It is several times the project that was described.
1. Quote from an export, never from a page count
Content management systems export properly. A page count is a guess about the visible part of something considerably larger.
2. List the invisible content explicitly
Navigation, buttons, form fields, error and validation messages, confirmation emails, search results, metadata and alt text. Clients have never thought about any of it.
3. Establish what is actually in scope
The whole site, the main pages only, or a defined subset. Many clients are better served by translating twenty pages well than four hundred badly.
4. Decide about the blog and archive
Hundreds of historical posts are usually not worth translating. Saying so saves a client money and builds enormous trust.
5. Explain the localisation layer
Dates, numbers, currencies, addresses, units, imagery, examples and cultural references. This is what makes a site feel native rather than translated.
6. Cover the legal content separately
Terms, privacy and consumer information frequently need adapting to local law rather than translating, and that is a different service.
7. Raise the technical implementation early
How the site handles multiple languages, whether the platform supports it, and who does the implementation. This determines the entire project shape.
8. Discuss the search implications
Keywords do not translate directly, and a site translated literally ranks for nothing. This is where localisation earns its cost.
9. Agree the review process
Who in the client's target market reviews it, and how long they have. Unmanaged review is the single largest cause of localisation projects stalling.
9b. Agree what happens to images and documents
Screenshots with embedded text, diagrams, downloadable brochures and video captions all sit outside a content export and are frequently assumed to be included. Listing them separately at quotation stage turns a late discovery into a decision the client makes deliberately.
10. Plan for maintenance from the outset
Who translates new content, how quickly, and what happens when the source changes. Without this the second language decays from the day it launches.
11. Ask which markets and which variants
Language and market are different. A single language may need distinct versions for different countries, and the client should decide deliberately.
12. Build a glossary at the start
Product names, technical terms and brand language, agreed before translation begins rather than corrected afterwards across four hundred pages.
13. Cover the ongoing needs alongside
Clients localising a site frequently need documents and interpreting too, as covered in certified and urgent translation questions and interpreting bookings for events and appointments.
14. Expect partner and channel questions
Businesses entering a market ask about partners at the same time, which is the pattern in partner and reseller enquiries from your website.
15. Remember the dynamic content
Stock, availability and pricing change constantly and need handling separately, which is the problem in is it in stock, the question retail websites fumble.
16. Scope it properly at enquiry
An assistant that asks for the platform, the word count from an export, the target markets, whether legal content is included and who will review it produces a quotable project rather than a page count. See pricing, run the numbers on the chatbot ROI calculator, and the sector view sits under agencies.