Case study
Why a translation is not enough when you add Spanish to your site
When we added Spanish to our own platform, the translation was the easy part. Number formats, words with two meanings and a chat assistant that guessed the wrong language caused the trouble.
Key takeaways
- A translated file is the smallest part of adding a language; the decisions around it are what customers read.
- One English word that does two jobs needs two words in the second language, chosen where the label sits on the screen.
- A browser set to Spanish in the United States is not asking for Spain's number format.
- Redirect by browser language on the home page only, so shared links keep opening where they were sent.
- Measure which languages customers write in before choosing the next one to add.
Our own service spoke five languages, and Spanish was not one of them. A Spanish-speaking owner who reached our site had nothing to switch to. We planned and delivered the sixth language in a day, across the website, the portal our clients log into, the blog and the chat assistants. The translation was the easy part; adding Spanish to your website is a run of decisions, and the words come last.
What a customer meets when the language is nearly right
A business that speaks a customer's language well is trusted with the enquiry, and one that speaks it badly tends to lose it without being told why. A page run through a translation tool with the wrong level of formality, or with Spain's words where a customer in the United States expects their own, reads as careless even to a reader who cannot name what is off. In legal texts the cost is different: a word chosen loosely can promise something the business never meant.
The examples here come from Spanish written for customers in the United States, and the rule behind them is to use the number and date format your own customers expect. The same checks find the same traps wherever you sell.
Why adding Spanish to your website is a set of decisions
Translation tools assume one English word has one meaning and one country has one way of writing numbers. Neither holds, and the gap only shows when a real reader looks at the finished screen. Before translating anything we wrote the rules down: neutral Latin American Spanish, the polite form of address throughout, and US number, money and date formats. Everything a customer reads is in scope — website, portal, blog, apps, chat assistants, notifications and terms — because a language is not a page, it is every place you say anything.
What we found when we read the result
Numbers were the first trap. A phone or browser set to Spanish in the United States fell back to Spain's convention, so 1,234.56 was shown as 1.234,56. The value is the same and the meaning is not, and in a price it is the kind of mistake a customer sees before anything else.
The second trap was words doing two jobs. In the staff console, Open named a status and also the action that changes it; Record named a log entry and the button that starts a voice recording; Held named a meeting that had taken place and data kept because the law requires it. Spanish needs a different word for each sense, so whichever single translation was in place was wrong somewhere on the screen.
The third was in the terms. Our marketing name for the trial carried a length in days, while the terms themselves allow that length to be set differently, so the legal Spanish needed a defined term with no number inside it.
The fourth was the chat assistants. Their language guess read Portuguese as Spanish, because the two share small words such as para and saber, so a visitor writing in Portuguese was answered in Spanish.
What we changed
Spanish is now the sixth language across the service. Every line of the portal's word list, which the apps also draw on, was written for a business owner in the United States, and a half-finished line, a changed web address or a word used only in Spain now stops a page going out. Numbers, money and dates follow the US way in Spanish whichever market the customer is in. Each word with two senses got an entry of its own, so Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian all say the right one in the right place. A first-time visitor whose browser asks for Spanish is sent once to the home page in Spanish, and only the home page, so a shared link still opens where it was sent; the choice is remembered. The assistants now answer in whatever language the person writes, while a fixed message stays in English rather than taking the nearest of the six.
What the service has now
Spanish pages open across our website, articles appear in Spanish, and a browser set to Spanish is greeted in Spanish. The apps carry Spanish in their next store versions, which were not out when this was written. Our analytics also show which languages people write to us in, beside the languages their browsers ask for, so the next language is chosen from evidence rather than a hunch.
What you can check yourself
- Switch your site to its second language and open a page with prices or dates. Are the numbers written the way your customers write them, or in another country's style?
- Find labels that reuse one English word, such as Open or Record, and read each one where it sits on the screen. If one word is doing both jobs, one of them is wrong.
- Write to your own chat assistant in a language you never added and read the reply.
- Open a link to an inner page from a phone set to another language. It should open the page you shared, not a home page.
- Ask who keeps the wording up to date and what stops a half-finished line going live. If nobody can say, that is the first thing to settle.
What to do next
Write the rules before the words: which Spanish, which formality, which number format, and which pages a visitor's browser setting is allowed to change. Then ask one native reader to go through the screens where money, dates and legal terms appear, reading the English and the Spanish side by side. In our own work, reading each label where it sits on the screen was how we caught the ones that carried two senses. Keeping a second language honest as pages change is the kind of work our engineers do for clients.
Questions people ask
Should I use one Spanish for every market, or pick words for the country I sell in?
Pick the Spanish your customers actually read, and write the choice down as a rule. Neutral Latin American Spanish with the polite form of address is a workable starting point for a business selling in the United States, and it reads oddly if Spain's words are mixed in. What matters is consistency: one variety, applied to every screen, is far easier to keep right than a blend. Numbers and dates still follow the customer's country, whichever variety you choose.
Why does my site show numbers and dates in the European style when a customer's phone is set to Spanish?
Because the browser's language setting is being read as Spanish from Spain, and the number formatting follows it. Your site is not doing the arithmetic differently; it is choosing a convention. Ask whoever looks after the site to check the language and region setting behind the Spanish pages, and to test with a phone set to Spanish in the United States. It is not something to change by hand on a live page.
Is it bad to redirect visitors to their browser's language automatically?
It is fine for the home page, done once, with the visitor's choice remembered afterwards. It goes wrong when every page redirects: a link someone shared no longer opens what was shared, and search engines are shown a different page from the one they indexed. Keep inner pages where they are and offer a visible language switch instead.
What should my chat assistant do when someone writes in a language my site does not offer?
It should answer in the language the person wrote if it can, and say plainly which languages you cover if it cannot. Falling back to the nearest language you do support confuses the reader and hides the gap. The failure we met was a guess based on shared little words, which read Portuguese as Spanish. A short honest reply in the customer's own language beats a confident answer in the wrong one.
How do I stop a marketing name from turning into a promise in my legal texts?
Keep the marketing name out of the terms and give the thing a defined term instead, with the details set elsewhere in the document. A name that carries a length or a number inside it will contradict the terms the first time that detail changes. Where the law matters, have the wording checked by someone qualified in the country you sell in.