Website Localisation: The Technical and Cultural Layers

Opening a site up to another market is not simply a matter of translating pages. Website localisation runs on five layers that are independent of one another: technical, content, cultural, search engine and legal. When one of the layers is left incomplete, the return on the others falls as well.

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The distinction serves a practical purpose. When you compare quotes, you can see which layer is in scope; when the budget has to be split, you can decide consciously which layer to postpone.

Below we open up the layers one by one, noting in each case whose decision it is and where the cost comes from.

Which layers does website localisation consist of?

The layers do not run in sequence but in parallel. They do have dependencies, though: the content layer cannot work efficiently until the technical layer is in place, and the search engine layer cannot be measured until the content is ready.

Layer	Scope	Who decides?
Technical	Address structure, language tags, encoding, redirection	Developer
Content	Which page is translated, which one is rewritten	Marketing + translation team
Cultural	Images, forms, payment, trust elements	Marketing + design
Search engine	Keyword research, titles and descriptions	SEO + translation team
Legal	Compulsory texts, contracts, privacy notice	Legal

The right-hand column of the table shows the areas a translation provider cannot complete on its own. This explains why the scope of a quote always creates work on the client side too.

Separating the layers has one further benefit: you can see which work is done when. The technical layer is set up once and rarely changes. The content layer is fed continuously. The cultural layer is usually completed before launch, while the search engine layer goes on being monitored after launch as well. This difference in rhythm makes it easier to spread the budget across the months.

The technical layer: address structure and language tags

The first decision is the address structure. There are three options: subdirectory, subdomain and separate domain. The subdirectory is the most practical for most projects; it shares the authority the existing domain has built up, and management stays within a single installation.

A subdomain is preferred in situations that technically require a separate installation. A separate domain makes sense if there is a separate legal entity, a separate brand or a wholly independent marketing strategy; otherwise you are left having to grow two sites separately.

The second technical matter is language tags. If the tags that tell search engines which page is meant for which language and region are missing, correctly translated pages can be shown to the wrong audience. The third is encoding: the whole site should use UTF-8, and Turkish letters should behave consistently in addresses and headings.

The last technical detail is redirection. Sending visitors automatically to a version based on their browser language is common practice, but it should not be left to work on its own; a visible option that lets the user change the language by hand should be present on every page.

The content layer: pages to be translated and pages to be rewritten

Translating the whole site is rarely the right decision. On most sites a small group of pages gathers the bulk of the visits; the rest of the archive stays in the long tail.

The practical method is this: a list of pages ranked by traffic and conversion is drawn up, the first group is localised, the results are measured, and the scope is then widened. This approach protects the budget and allows terminology decisions to mature on a small set of pages.

The second distinction is between translation and rewriting. Product descriptions, technical documentation and help content are translated. Campaign copy, slogans and case studies, on the other hand, are usually rewritten; staying tied to the source text does damage here.

This second group is known in the industry as transcreation and is charged separately. Pricing it per text or per hour rather than per word is normal, because the output is measured not by the length of the source text but by its impact in the target market.

There is a third group as well: content that will not be carried across at all. Campaigns specific to the source market, legal statements that do not apply there and announcements of local events should not appear on the target site. This weeding out is skipped in most projects, and the site fills up with pages that look irrelevant to the visitor. When the scope list is drawn up, the “not to be translated” column has to be filled in too.

The cultural layer: images, forms, payment

The cultural layer decides whether the site feels like “a site from here”. Even when the text is right, the visitor keeps a distance if this layer is missing.

The most visible item is images. Images with writing on them have to be produced again; where the setting shown in stock photographs is remote from the target market, replacing them should be considered. Sample data falls into the same category: unless the names, currencies and telephone numbers on demo screens are replaced with local equivalents, the product goes on looking foreign.

Forms are the second item. Fields such as state, postcode and second surname are either removed for Türkiye or made optional; the address field is adapted to the neighbourhood-street-number arrangement. The telephone field has to work with the +90 prefix, and the validation rules have to accept the local format.

The third item is payment and trust elements. If the payment methods common in the target market are not offered, conversion falls. In the same way, trust stays incomplete when contact details, return conditions and customer service hours are not presented in the local form.

The fourth item, and the one least talked about, is formatting. Dates should be shown in the dd.mm.yyyy arrangement, amounts with a decimal comma, and the currency symbol after the amount. These settings are put right not by translating text but through the site’s locale configuration; a correction the translator makes in the file does not reach the screen.

The search engine layer: keywords are not translated

The most common mistake in this layer is translating the keywords of the source language directly. Even when users are looking for a product with the same concept in mind, they do not search for it with the same word.

The right method is to carry out independent keyword research in the target language. In Turkish searches most users do not type the letters in full; writing “ceviri” instead of “çeviri” is widespread. Because the language is agglutinative, the same root is also searched for in a great many inflected forms. These two features mean that the keyword set has to be built differently from the one in the source language.

In practice this calls for the translator and the SEO team to work together. Page titles, meta descriptions and subheadings need reconstruction in the target language rather than translation. As the body text is translated, the terms that came out of the research are expected to be placed in it naturally.

The result has to be measurable. Unless separate tracking is set up for the localised group of pages, the return on the investment cannot be seen and no decision can be taken about the next stage.

The cost of this layer is usually small, but its place in the order is critical. If the research is done before the translation, the terms are chosen correctly from the outset; if it is done afterwards, the same pages are worked through a second time. When you are getting a quote, asking whether the keyword research is planned before or after translation is a good sign of how mature the scope is.

The legal layer and maintenance

On consumer-facing sites some texts have to comply with the legislation of the target market. These are a matter of adaptation rather than translation; carrying the source text across word for word is usually not enough, because the legislation it rests on is different.

The typical items for Türkiye are these: the distance sales contract, the preliminary information form, the return and withdrawal conditions, the cookie notice and the privacy notice on personal data. Having these texts prepared with legal support is safer than leaving them to the translation provider.

Maintenance comes last. Localisation is not a one-off project; if every change made on the source site is left open in the target language, the sites drift apart over time. A sustainable arrangement means sending the changed content for translation at regular intervals and keeping the translation memory up to date.

The Türkiye context

Three local details stand out for sites opening up to Türkiye. The first is search behaviour: writing without Turkish letters is widespread, and although the search engine tolerates it, the on-site search has to show the same tolerance. If the on-site search returns nothing for the query “sirket”, the visitor cannot find the product.

The second is corporate expectations. In Türkiye, commercial sites are expected to carry the company title, the address, the tax office and the MERSIS details; corporate buyers look for this information before requesting a quote. In invoicing processes, e-invoice and e-archive compliance is a separate technical requirement.

The third is the personal data side. Forms that collect visitor data, cookies and analytics tools are assessed under the KVKK; the privacy notice and the explicit consent flow have to be in Turkish and easy to understand. For the details you can look at the relevant articles in our knowledge centre. This article is for general information only and is not legal advice.

What does this mean for you?

If you are going to open your site up to Turkish, plan the work not as a single item but as five layers. The order below will let you get the first version out quickly.

Decide on the address structure and set up the language tags; finish this before the content work begins.
Draw up a list of pages ranked by traffic and bring only the top group into scope in the first round.
Separate the pages to be translated from those to be rewritten; price the two as separate items.
Have independent keyword research done for Turkish and build the titles around it.
Add the form fields, the payment options and the text inside images to the checklist.
Have the compulsory legal texts prepared with legal support; do not mix them in with the translation.
Set a three-monthly update rhythm once the site is live.

Writing down at the outset which of these steps are yours and which belong to the provider prevents most of the scope arguments that arise halfway through a project. If you share your page list, we can work out the scope and the timing together: request a quote or look through our price items.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to translate my whole site?

No. In most projects a small group of pages gathers the bulk of the visits. Localising those pages first and measuring the result is both faster and cheaper than translating the entire archive.

Is an automatic translation plug-in enough?

On corporate sites it usually is not. Automatic translation is fast, but it does not guarantee consistency of terminology, brand voice or legal texts. Human translation should be preferred on product and sales pages.

Should I buy a separate domain for the Turkish pages?

Usually not. A subdirectory structure is enough for most projects and preserves the authority the domain has built up. A separate domain makes sense if there is a separate legal entity or an independent marketing strategy.

Is maintenance needed once the localisation is finished?

Yes. If every change made on the source site is left open in the target language, the sites drift apart over time. A sustainable arrangement means sending the changed content for translation at regular intervals.

Sources

Pietrzak, P. & Kornacki, M. (2021). Using CAT Tools in Freelance Translation. Routledge, pp. 16–22.
Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2013). Translation and Web Localization. Routledge, pp. 24–48.
W3C Internationalization, Language tags in HTML and XML.
Personal Data Protection Law (6698) – mevzuat.gov.tr