Our SmartMATE Website Translation Proxy tool is a cloud-based localisation solution. Content is ‘crawled’ from your website and all translatable content is sent to our translation ecosystem. The content is then organised to produce a localised mirror image of your source website, in real time.

It’s perfect if your website is not already set up to handle multiple languages and you don’t have much IT support at hand, making localisation easier, more consistent and more efficient.

Unsure if Website Translation Proxy is the right solution for your website? Here are some frequently asked questions

Is it secure?

Yes. Our service is only as secure as your website, as the proxy only sees the live content that is publically available on your website. The proxy operates in a PCI compliant data centre.

For added security, we can configure the service to ignore sections of pages, for example, text that comes after the words “Account Number”.

This will ensure these strings are not captured for the translation queue or even evaluated by the proxy. If you would like to localise the content of a secure portal or intranet, for example, we would be able to do this, but may instead recommend one of our other SmartMATE solutions.

Can the translation proxy localise all content, including images?

The translation proxy can translate and localise all of the content that is contained in the HTML. It cannot translate text in images, PDFs, or videos. You would need an external process to handle those translations, or replace them yourself.

How does the proxy identify new content?

Whenever the proxy encounters any content for which it does not have any rules, it will register it as new content. This page processing can be initiated by either a visitor browsing or a spider ‘crawling’ through the website. If you want to develop translations before the content is live, you can point the proxy to a staging or test server.

Can I configure the proxy to exclude/include certain content?

Of course, the proxy includes many flexible configuration tools.

Can the translated sites be different than the source site?

Yes. We can configure rules to hide pages from the navigation or blocks of content on specific pages. Local sites can also override any page with permission and provide their own local content.

Does it work for dynamic pages?

Yes. Translations are managed at a block (rather than a full page) level. Translations are applied whenever the proxy recognises the same source content block.

Will it interfere with interactive functionality?

Not at all. Your source site continues to deliver interactive functionality such as search, contact forms, and even e-commerce. The translation proxy simply translates the text that the visitor sees after it is generated by the source site.

Can I use this tool to add languages to my already localised website?

Yes, and we offer over 180 languages, so you have plenty to choose from.

Can I make some in-context reviews to your translations?

Of course, because the proxy acts as mirror, we offer an overlay function where you can go into your localised website and directly change a piece of text.

Is my localised website hosted on a different domain?

This can be arranged as you wish. Your localised website will function as part of your website on a subdomain or subfolder, depending on your preferences, for example: fr.website.com, or website.fr.

Are hyperlinks picked up, and how are they managed?

When we crawl your website, we pick up all the content that is publically available. This will include internal pages and subpages on your website and all other external links. The crawl tool will find and identify external links and will exclude them from the word count of your website.

This proxy tool is also able to replace external links to their localised equivalents, e.g linking to google.fr instead of google.co.uk.

Will it work with my CDN (Content Delivery Network)?

Yes, the translation proxy will work seamlessly with your CDN. You can point the translation proxy to your CDN. You can also put a CDN in front of the translation proxy. Your CDN will mainly deal with binary (images and multimedia) and static files (CSS, JS), and they will be ignored by the proxy anyhow.

Can an e-Commerce website use this tool?

Using a proxy service for a large e-Commerce website can be quite complex, as e-Commerce websites will use a platform that is more tailored for e-Commerce. We would recommend looking at our other SmartMATE products for better integration. Website Translation Proxy could be used for other parts of your website, such as FAQs or contact us pages.

Can I leverage translation memory?

We can import and export translation memories using the standard TMX format. It’s better to have one canonical Translation Memory (TM) to avoid the process of merging them together.

What is the cost?

There are three pricing components:

Onboarding costs

Hosting costs

Translation costs

It’s hard to determine an exact cost without knowing your requirements. Aspects such as target languages, turnaround time and industry content type all have an impact on the translation cost.

If your questions weren’t answered here or you want to find out more about SmartMATE Website Translation Proxy, get in touch using the form below.