Professional Website Translation Services: Translate Your Website for International Markets
Website translation services put everything a visitor meets into their own language: web pages, navigation, product descriptions, checkout text, forms and the metadata behind them. Espresso works from £0.10 per word on standard content; a certified translation costs £30 for each page of 250 words or fewer and comes back in 24 to 48 hours, and a sworn translation costs £55 a page and takes 7 to 14 working days. Everything else is delivered in two to three working days, with a 24-hour express option, across 150+ languages for businesses of any size, handled by 2,000+ linguists working to ISO 17100.
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What is website translation? Website translation is the work of putting a whole site into another language — the pages people read, the menus they click, the product data, the forms and the metadata underneath — so that it reads as though it had been written in that country rather than carried into it. Espresso does this in 150+ languages under ISO 17100:2015, with a second pair of eyes on every file, from £0.10 per word, and quotes free within 1 hour.
What Is Website Translation, and How Is Website Localisation Different?
Translate the Words Precisely. Most translation agencies stop at the site copy; Espresso also handles the official documents a page sometimes has to publish alongside it.
Website translation puts the text of a page into another language. Website localisation changes what sits around that text so the page suits the country it is aimed at. Professional linguists do the first part, holding meaning and terminology steady so that a precise translation reaches a reader in Madrid or Warsaw with the message a reader in Manchester gets. The second part covers dates, addresses, units, telephone formats, imagery and tone — and, for a British company, which variety of English the page is written in, which readers notice long before anything else.
A British page writes 18 June 2026, sets a time as 14:30 and gives a telephone number that starts 020; the German version of the same page writes the date 18.06.2026 and formats the number for a German reader. Idioms move too, and a phrase that carries a British advert often means nothing at all once it has been translated word-for-word.
| What changes | British English | American English |
|---|---|---|
| Spelling | localisation, optimise, organisation, analyse, catalogue | localization, optimize, organization, analyze, catalog |
| What you are buying | website localisation, localisation services | website localization, localization services |
| Everyday vocabulary | postcode, mobile, trainers, delivery, shop | zip code, cell phone, sneakers, shipping, store |
| Dates and time | 18 June 2026, 14:30 | June 18, 2026, 2:30 p.m. |
| Punctuation | single quotation marks, full stop outside the closing mark | double quotation marks, period inside the closing mark |
| Contact details | county and postcode, telephone number starting +44 | state and ZIP code, telephone number starting +1 |
Adapt Everything Around Them
Espresso runs translation and localisation as one job rather than two. Translators who are native speakers of the market work against a glossary and a style guide agreed with you before the first file moves, so a product name, a legal term or a form of address is written the same way on page one and on page four hundred.
Content reaches them in whatever form your content management system already produces — a plugin export, a CSV or XLIFF file, or a call to your CMS API — and returns in the same shape. That is how a company with several hundred web pages, an e-commerce catalogue and a mobile app gets all of it into multiple languages without anybody retyping a line.
Which UK Businesses Need Website Translation and Localisation Services?
Four kinds of British business buy this most often, though Espresso works for businesses and individuals alike.
How Does the Espresso Website Translation Process Work?
A website translation project runs in three stages, and the cost is fixed before the first one starts.
1. Count and Quote
The first stage counts the words and fixes the price. You send a URL, a sitemap or an export; Espresso counts the real total, separates the strings that repeat across the site, notes which pages need a subject specialist, and returns a free quote within 1 hour with the delivery date on it. Nothing begins until you approve it, and there is no subscription and no per-site rate — a professional website translation service is priced on the words, the languages and the deadline.
2. Translation and Review
The second stage is the translation, and it is done twice. Speakers of the target language who know the sector write the copy, and a second linguist then reads it against the source, as ISO 17100:2015 requires. Standard website content comes back in two to three working days, express work in 24 hours, a certified page in 24 to 48 hours and a sworn page in 7 to 14 working days.
3. Import and Technical Check
The third stage puts the text back into the site and makes it findable. Files return in the format they left in, so the layout survives; then the hreflang tags, the locale URLs, the language switcher and the title tags and meta descriptions are checked against the live pages. Automated translation skips this stage completely, which is why a widget-translated site so often looks finished and performs badly.
How Do You Translate Your Entire Website Inside WordPress or Shopify?
Espresso is an official WPML partner, so a WordPress site is translated from inside its own dashboard. Pages, posts, custom fields and menus go out to the translators and come back attached to the matching language version of the same page, with the layout and the block structure intact. Nothing is copied and pasted, and that is where most formatting damage happens.
It also makes the work repeatable. When a new English page goes live, only the new words are sent, so an ongoing site costs a fraction of the first pass and the terminology matches what is already published.
Espresso is a Crowdin partner as well. Crowdin suits software localisation and app strings, where the text changes weekly and a release cannot wait for files to be emailed round; it is the usual choice for product teams shipping continuously.
Between them, the two integrations cover both halves of most British digital businesses: the marketing site and the product itself. The glossary is shared across the two, so the word used for a feature on a landing page is the word inside the application.
Which Website Platforms Does Espresso Work With?
Shopify shops are translated field by field: product titles and descriptions, collections, variants, checkout text, delivery and returns pages, and the emails that follow an order. If a shopper reads it between the advert and the refund, Espresso can localise it.
Wix, Webflow, Squarespace, headless setups and bespoke systems are handled through an export — CSV, XLIFF, JSON or a WordPress file — or through your CMS API, so no one has to retype anything into a template. Where the platform allows it, the export and import steps are automated.
Every platform behaves differently, and the setup is chosen to fit your business needs rather than the other way round. One detail catches British sites out: English is short. German and Finnish run about a third longer, so a button, a menu item or a heading that fits in English can break the layout once translated. Strings at risk are marked up front, before anything reaches your theme.
For a Shopify catalogue specifically, see the eCommerce Translation service.
Machine Translation or a Professional Translator: Which Suits a UK Website?
Use machine translation where nobody’s decision depends on the wording, and a professional translator where it does. An engine produces a usable draft in common pairs, and for an internal knowledge base or a bulk archive, that draft plus human editing is a sensible economy.
Customer-facing pages are the other case entirely. A home page, a product description, a pricing page or a call to action carries the voice a buyer judges you on, and machine output can be grammatically perfect and still read like a foreign company guessing. Human translators know what a phrase implies, what a local rival sounds like and how people actually search, which is how accurate translations end up as content that resonates rather than merely parses.
The cost of getting this wrong is not the translation fee. A mistranslated claim on a British site becomes a compliance problem in the market it was aimed at, a mistranslated specification becomes a returned pallet, and a page that simply reads oddly loses the enquiry without ever telling you why. Rewriting a site after launch costs more than having it written properly once.
How Does a Multilingual Website Affect SEO for a UK Business?
A translated page can rank in the language it is written in, and an English-only site cannot. Search engine optimisation in a new market starts there: the page has to exist in the language people type in, and then it has to answer the question they actually type, which is rarely the question translated out of English.
Hreflang is the tag that tells a search engine which version of a page belongs to which audience, and a multilingual website needs it as much between two Englishes as between two languages. Without it, your en-GB page competes with an en-IE or en-US page for the same reader, and the wrong one gets served.
Domain structure matters more for a .co.uk than for most addresses. A .co.uk carries a built-in signal that the site is aimed at the United Kingdom, and that signal is not something you can reassign, so companies selling seriously into several countries usually keep their other languages on a generic domain — a subdirectory such as /de/ or /fr/ on a .com — and leave the British address to do the job it is good at.
Keywords have to be researched again in each market, not translated. The German word a buyer types is frequently not the German for the English word you rank for, and the volume sits somewhere you would not have guessed. Espresso researches the terms in the target language first and writes the page to them, including the title tag and the meta description that win the click.
Which Professional Linguists Handle Your Pages?
Every Espresso translator works into their own first language and meets the qualification requirements set out in ISO 17100:2015. Accuracy and quality come from that rule plus the reviewer who follows: two people who read the language see the file before you do.
Language on its own is not enough for a website. Whoever writes your German pages needs to know how German buyers search, how to hold a glossary steady across hundreds of pages, and what translation tools will and will not carry across from your CMS.
The result is high-quality translations that hold one voice in every language, which is what makes a mid-sized British brand look established in a market it entered last month.
Translators are assigned by sector — law, finance, engineering, medical devices, software, retail — so the person handling a technical page has worked in that field. Document translation is routed the same way when a page has to publish one.
What Does a Full Website Translation Cover?
A website is more than its pages, and the forgotten parts are the ones that break the experience:
- Pages and blog: home, about, service and landing pages, plus the articles that bring people in from search
- Product data: titles, descriptions, options, categories, size and measurement charts, stock and delivery wording
- Checkout and after it: basket, payment, delivery, returns, and the order and dispatch emails that follow
- Interface: menus, buttons, filters, form labels, validation warnings and error messages
- Metadata: title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text and URL slugs, which is what search engines read
- Technical signals: hreflang tags, locale URLs, the language switcher and the sitemap entries behind them
Leave any one of these in English and the visitor meets it at the worst possible moment, usually at payment. It is also where a site stops being accessible to users on a screen reader, because alt text and form labels are read aloud in whatever language they were left in.
What Does Website Translation Cost in Pounds?
Pricing is per word, and only a few things move the figure:
Five things decide it: how many words there are, which language pairs you need, whether the content is specialist, how the site hands its text over, and whether the work is a one-off or continuous. Rarer pairs cost more than English into Spanish or French, and a page of engineering or legal copy needs a translator who has worked in that field.
Espresso quotes website work from £0.10 per word for standard content. Where a page of your site has to carry an officially certified document, a certified translation is £30 for each page of 250 words or fewer; a sworn translation is £55 a page. There is no subscription, no per-site rate and no charge for the quote itself — it is built from your word count, your languages and your deadline, and it reaches you inside the hour.
Fast and reliable delivery is a matter of scheduling. Standard content takes two to three working days, express work 24 hours, a certified page 24 to 48 hours and a sworn page 7 to 14 working days. Fast translations across a whole site come from sequencing the pages that earn money first, and every date is written into the quote.
Three habits reliably cut the bill: send editable text instead of scanned PDFs, keep words out of images so they do not have to be rebuilt, and hand over the site in one batch so that translation memory charges a repeated phrase once rather than on every page it appears on.
Send the URL and a rough idea of the content volume, and the quote comes back free, with no obligation, inside one hour.
| Work | Price | Delivered in |
|---|---|---|
| Standard website content: pages, blog, product data | From £0.10 per word | Two to three working days |
| Express handling on eligible work | Quoted with the job | 24 hours |
| Certified translation of a document on your site | £30 for each page of 250 words or fewer | 24 to 48 hours |
| Sworn translation | £55 a page | 7 to 14 working days |
| Your quote | Free, no obligation | Within 1 hour |
Why Can Automated Translation Tools Damage Your Website Content?
Because nothing is read before it is published. Google’s spam policies name text that has been translated automatically and put online without human review as low-value content, and a site that fills fifteen languages that way can lose ground in all fifteen at once.
The second problem is quieter. A browser widget renders the page after the fact, so the translated text is not always what a crawler stores, the metadata usually stays in English, and the phrasing lands somewhere between correct and strange — enough for a reader to work out that nobody at the company speaks their language.
Espresso uses machine translation only where a person finishes the job. Every file is read by a translator and checked again by a reviewer, so the speed is kept and the risk is not. That is the difference between automated output and professional translation services.
How Should You Go About Choosing the Right Translation Service?
Selecting a website translation service comes down to eight questions, and they are worth asking before the quote rather than after the launch. A badly translated site costs search visibility, credibility and the enquiries you never hear about, and unpicking it means paying someone to re-read every page. Freelancer, plugin or translation company, these eight answers separate them.
1. Do the translators work into their own language?
A translator should write only into their native language. Ask it plainly, because a supplier who translates in both directions is telling you that half of its output is written by someone working the wrong way round. Espresso assigns work one way only.
2. Which English are you being sold?
This one is specific to British companies and it is missed constantly. If a supplier’s default is American English, your pages come back with -ize endings, American date order and American vocabulary, and British readers register it as a foreign site before they read a full sentence. Put the variety in writing before the work starts — and ask the same of Spanish, Portuguese and French, which each have distinct European and Latin American forms.
3. Do they research keywords in the target market?
Translating your English keywords is not keyword research. A supplier should be able to tell you what people actually type in the target country, and write the title tag and meta description to that, rather than to a translation of yours.
4. How does the text get in and out of your CMS?
Official platform partnerships are what save the formatting. Espresso is an official partner of WPML and Crowdin, so content leaves WordPress and returns to WordPress without hand-moved files, broken blocks or lost layout. For anything else, ask exactly how the text travels.
5. Is there a second person on every file?
One pair of eyes is not a process. ISO 17100:2015 requires a separate reviser on every job, and Espresso works to it. Ask whether the review step is genuinely a second linguist rather than the translator re-reading their own work, and whether it happens every time or only on request.
6. Who is responsible for hreflang?
Translation and technical setup are often sold separately, and the gap between them is where multilingual sites fail. Establish who owns the hreflang tags, the locale URLs and the language switcher before the files arrive, not after the pages fail to appear.
7. What happens as the site grows?
A website is not a document; it changes every week. Ask how new pages are submitted, what the turnaround is on a few paragraphs, whether repeated content is charged twice, and whether you keep the same translators — a new voice halfway through is obvious to a native reader.
8. Will they translate one of your pages first?
Ask for a sample of your own copy rather than a portfolio. It shows you the tone, the terminology and the handling of your product names before any money moves, and a supplier confident in the work will agree to it.
Which Other Localisation Services Does Espresso Offer to UK Clients?
Website translation rarely arrives alone. It sits alongside the rest of Espresso’s global translation services — an online catalogue, an app, a product interface, and the audio or video on your pages — each running inside the same project, on the same glossary, with the same two-step check. That is what full-service translation is supposed to mean, and it is why one translation partner is easier to manage than four.
eCommerce Translation
For an online shop, eCommerce Translation covers the catalogue, the checkout and the messages that follow an order.
Multilingual SEO Services
For search work in a new market, Multilingual SEO Services covers keywords, metadata and the technical setup.
Mobile App Translation
For an app, Mobile App Translation keeps store listings and in-app strings consistent with the site.
Software Localisation
For a product interface, Software Localisation handles strings, help content and release cycles.
Gaming Translation
For games, Gaming Translation covers in-game text, interface and player messages.
2,000+
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150+
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What Do UK Clients Ask Most About Online Translation?
What is the difference between website translation and website localisation?
Translation changes the words. Localisation changes everything they sit in: dates, addresses, units, telephone formats, imagery, tone, and which variety of English, Spanish or French the page is written in. Espresso does both inside one project.
How much does website translation cost in pounds?
Standard website content starts at £0.10 per word. A certified translation is £30 for each page of 250 words or fewer, and a sworn translation is £55 a page. There is no subscription and no per-site rate: the quote is built from your word count, your languages and your deadline, and it arrives within 1 hour.
Does translating a website improve search rankings?
It can, once the page exists in the language people search in and hreflang points each version at the right audience. Keywords have to be researched in the target market rather than translated, and the title tag and meta description written to those terms.
Can a translation widget handle a website on its own?
No. Text published with nobody reading it risks mistranslation and the loss of your brand voice, and Google’s spam policies treat pages translated automatically and put online without human review as low-value content. Espresso uses machine output only as a first draft, with a translator and a reviewer on every file.
Can Espresso work inside my WordPress site?
Yes. Espresso is an official WPML partner, so pages, posts, custom fields and menus leave the dashboard and return attached to the matching language version. Shopify, Wix, Webflow, headless and bespoke systems are handled through an export or through your CMS API.
How long does website translation take?
Standard content takes two to three working days, express work 24 hours, a certified page 24 to 48 hours and a sworn page 7 to 14 working days. A full site is scheduled against its size and the number of languages, and the date is confirmed in the quote you receive within 1 hour.
What is hreflang, and does a .co.uk site need it?
Hreflang tells a search engine which language or country version of a page to serve to whom. A .co.uk site needs it as soon as it publishes a second language or a second variety of English, so that a British page and an Irish or American one stop competing for the same reader.
