Translating landing pages

It’s very common to see affiliates starting with offers and geos that are available in the same country or language they speak. Especially if you’re going to prepare creatives (push traffic) or landing pages, you will need to use localized language and translations as you start running offers worldwide.

While you can cover a good chunk of the market if you speak English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese, on many occasions the top converting offers work in countries where they speak foreign languages, and in many cases, it’s just one country that speaks that language. Italy, Greece, Japan, Indonesia, etc. are just a few examples.

Pair this with the common recurrence of mVAS offers being available in this type of country where there are fewer carrier restrictions, and you’ll quickly realize how important it is to translate creatives and landing pages for your campaigns.

Fortunately, if you’re using a spy tool such as Anstrex (the one we analyzed in the Market Research segment), you have a great advantage as you can download landing pages and creatives that are translated already. Nonetheless, you should still check the translations or translate your best-performing copy and test them to see if they perform better.

For translations, there are several options you can use:

• Google translate
• OneHourTranslation
• UpWork, Fiverr or similar services
• Asking a friend or family for help

Let’s go over each option and analyze its pros and cons.

Google Translate

This is Google’s free service to translate between dozens of languages around the world. Truth be told, this service isn’t great, but it does a decent job at translating words or simple sentences.

For example, if you want to translate a headline for your landing page or the title of your push notification creative, it could be decent enough.

However, for large paragraphs or tons of text, I’d avoid it because it’s not reliable. What did you expect from a free service though!

One Hour Translation (OHT)

This is a paid service that connects you with thousands of translators around the world. I recommend you submit your copy in English and then select the language you want to translate it to.

One Hour Translation charges by word and it depends on how advanced you want your translator to be. In most cases, using the basic translation service is enough, but you can always hire someone to check it just in case.

Translations from OHT take less than 24 hours and you can select localized languages for your campaigns, such as English from the UK vs. English from the USA. Or Spanish from Spain vs. Spanish from Mexico or other places. You get the idea.

If you have a high-performing landing page or creative, even if it’s already translated, I’d submit it for review or try a different translation from OHT just to see if it performs better.

Upwork, Fiverr, and similar services

If OHT is too expensive for you, you can always hire people from places like Upwork or Fiverr that could do it for a lower rate. Make sure you hire someone from the country you’re targeting to get the best translations possible, including the slang they use and localized ideas.

You can even go as far as hiring people from forums or other translation gigs by searching on Google. Many people are looking to make a quick buck and if they speak two languages getting paid for translating doesn’t sound like a bad deal.

Asking a friend or family for help

If you have friends or perhaps a family member that lives in other countries or happens to know a few extra languages, you might ask them to help you with a quick translation. You could even pay them or invite them for a coffee/beer next time you see them.

However, friends and family can only be used a few times before they feel they are being worked on. Also, if you’re running offers from questionable verticals such as adult or dating, they might have this weird look on their face when you ask them for help.

Use them wisely, if any.