Japanese SEO,

This is part 2 of my response to this question:
If I produce a website and have it translated to Japanese then how confident are you that you can optimize the site for search engines in Japan?

Now let’s discuss translation.
Apparently search engines depend on what they can read on your site to evaluate and rank the site.  But most translators don’t think about it.  They don’t think about what words people would use on Google or Yahoo to search for the products or services that your site offers.  They don’t study the competitors sites or PPC/ Adwords ads to learn the prevalent words they use. For example, if you are selling cashmere stoles, should you call them stoles or wraps? Should the description be luxury, soft or silky? Should it say made in Scotland or Scottish?

Doing a keyword research and using the right words in the copy of your website is critical. So the best way to translate your website is to do a keyword research first (in the target language), then translate using the right words and phrases. The result is search-query oriented text.  

So here is my suggestion. When you find a candidate for translation, ask if he or she offers keyword research. If not, try ask if he/she can study your competitors’ sites and provide you a glossary specific to your products and services (even if you can’t read the translated words).

Also, ask the translator to produce a good copy, not a word to word translation.  Request a sample translation for a few sentences from your website and have it reviewed by someone capable of reading and writing Japanese.

Developing a fully automated Japanese/English bilingual ecommerce site is very complicated and costly.  For small or medium size businesses, there is a practical alternative.  It is to leave the shopping cart just in English but provide A) a comprehensive shopping guide section customized for the Japanese shoppers written in Japanese, and B) Japanese customer service to answer email inquiries in Japanese.

Here are two examples.

• http://www.hannaandersson.com
• http://www.sigzane.com

Let’s look at Hanna Andersson’s.  It’s one of the best I have seen.
Their Japanese shopping guide includes:

• About Hanna Andersson
• About Hanna’s fabric
• Privacy policy / security
• Return policy
• Back order
• Shipping and custom
• Clothing size charts
• Shoes size charts
• Order status (input order number)
• Online shopping guide
• Error messages
• Payment method
• Q&A
• Free catalog

Both of the sites listed above have a Japanese speaking customer service person who can answer email inquiries in Japanese.  This is a huge plus.  Imagine that you are trying to shop at a site written in Japanese.  If you can write email to them in English, wouldn’t that make you feel much more comfortable to putting your credit number down?  It is not necessary to hire a part-time person for this if you are just testing out the Japan market.  You can outsource it to an email translation service.  We can arrange this for you, so please inquire about it.

Shopping guide and customer service in Japanese (or in another language) are good things to have even if your site is equipped with bilingual shopping cart.  If you can afford it, that would be ideal.  The point here is that with a good shopping guide and customer service in Japanese, a majority of your prospective Japanese customers will be fine in shopping at your site, and you can save by not developing and running a bilingual shopping cart.

Nissan has a sports coupe called Datsun 280Z or Fair Lady Z. Fair
Lady Z was the original name given to the car when it was
developed in Japan. Someone probably advised Nissan that, to the
Americans, the name Fair Lady Z doesn’t match the car. So the company picked
a different name for the U.S. market.

This illustrates a potential pitfall in naming a product or service in another language. If
you are translating your website into another language, it is worth consulting someone to avoid this “Fair Lady” pitfall. (By the way, “Fair Lady Z” sounds fine to the Japanese people’s ears as a name of a sports coupe, mainly because it is in English. It is similar to any French words sounding sophisticated to the Americans. )

Depending on who you ask to translate, the same sentence can can be translated quite differently.

Here are 3 different translations of the same Japanese sentence by different translators. (C) is my translation.
A) In regards to the remarkable trouble you have caused the public on suspicion of ordinance infraction dealing with the prevention of misconduct using force, on 7/30/2007, the action was taken not to bring suit to prosecute.

B) As of July 30, 2007, I waived the indictment of the case that you were suspected to have violated the Ordinance against Disturbing the Peace.

C) On July 30, 2007, we decided to waive the indictment against you for the alleged violation of Ordinance for Safe and Secure Community Development.

(A) and (B) are examples of poor translation.