Common Mistakes When Exporting Your Website to New Languages

Expanding into new markets involves much more than just translating words. Behind a functional multilingual website are technical, linguistic, and strategic decisions that can make the difference between a great user experience and a site that confuses or frustrates visitors. When deciding to adapt a site into multiple languages, it’s common for good intentions to be overshadowed by rushed or poorly implemented choices.

What are the most common mistakes when launching a site in new languages?

Failing to adapt content to the local cultural context

The first obstacle often goes unnoticed: assuming a literal translation is enough. However, there are subtle—and not so subtle—differences in how a brand communicates from one country to another. From the way texts are structured to the everyday references used, what sounds natural in one language may feel forced or confusing in another.

For example, a site targeting a U.S. audience shouldn’t simply replicate the same terms, spelling, or expressions used in a UK version, even though the language is technically the same. Localization, understood as adapting content to the social, linguistic, and cultural context, should be considered from the very beginning.

Relying solely on automated translation systems

In environments pressured to reduce time and costs, it’s common to use automatic translation tools to cover the entire site. While these tools have improved, they still lack the precision, tone, and nuance expected in professional settings.

Especially when content has commercial or legal implications, relying exclusively on automated solutions is risky. Content translation is not just about converting words but about clearly communicating intention, tone, and a specific message. Leaving this responsibility to automated systems without subsequent human validation is one of the most impactful negative decisions.

Publishing without native review or linguistic quality control

Even when human translators are involved, a critical step is often skipped: final review by a native speaker of the target language. This step catches idiomatic errors, incorrect phrasing, or inconsistencies that might be missed by someone fluent technically but not a daily user of the language.

In digital interfaces, mistakes go beyond spelling errors—they signal untrustworthiness. Users quickly notice awkward or confusing writing, which can negatively affect site engagement and conversion rates.

Ignoring multilingual SEO from the start

A frequent mistake with multilingual sites is developing translations without considering their impact on organic visibility. When new content isn’t optimized for the search terms used by users in each country, the site misses valuable ranking opportunities.

This means not only translating but researching local keywords, adapting titles, meta descriptions, and URL structures for each version. Technical SEO must also address link structures, multilingual sitemaps, and potentially differentiated robots.txt files.

Not using hreflang tags or controlling duplicate indexing

From an SEO standpoint, one of the most serious technical errors is duplicating content on different URLs without properly marking which language each corresponds to. Google and other search engines may interpret this as duplicate content if hreflang tags or equivalent configurations aren’t used.

These tags indicate which version of a page should be shown based on user location and language, avoiding indexing conflicts. Ignoring or misconfiguring them can cause wrong versions to appear in markets where they don’t make sense, harming both user experience and search rankings.

Leaving parts of the site untranslated or with incomplete translations

A visible sign of poor internationalization is the presence of mixed languages within the same page or section. This often results from partial translations, misconfigured plugins, or disorganized manual processes.

The outcome is confusing: users may browse the site in their language only to suddenly encounter content in another language without warning. This creates friction, increases bounce rates, and leaves an impression of sloppiness that is hard to undo. Rigorous control of all sections—including error messages, forms, and CMS components—is key to avoiding these unwanted language switches.

Failing to establish a version maintenance strategy

Once a site is live in multiple languages, the project isn’t finished. Every change in the original content requires corresponding updates in all other versions. Without a system to track and propagate these changes properly, misalignment risks persist.

This oversight is especially common in blogs, news sections, or product pages that are frequently updated. If content is kept current in one language but not replicated in others, inconsistencies arise that affect site coherence and professional perception.

Overlooking country-specific legal and regulatory requirements

Beyond content, each country has its own rules on data protection, e-commerce, cookies, terms of use, or digital invoicing. Simply translating legal texts without verifying their local validity can lead to penalties or loss of user trust.

This includes not just privacy policies but disclaimers, consent forms, and data collection practices. While often considered secondary, adapting these texts to the applicable legal framework is part of a serious implementation.

Although these errors may seem independent, they tend to accumulate when internationalization projects lack proper planning. Each blind spot or last-minute decision leaves a mark that ultimately reflects on the user experience.

The cost of fixing a poor implementation can be significantly higher than planning properly from the start. And while translation is the most visible element, what’s truly at stake is a brand’s ability to be understood and trusted beyond its original language. That ability depends not only on words but on the system built around them.