Parlay.

Translation and localisation

A new market gets its own research. Running last quarter's English page through a translator produces something grammatically correct that ranks for nothing.

Why translated pages underperform

A translated page inherits the research that was done for a different country. Everything downstream of that is wrong in ways that are hard to see if you do not read the language.

The keyword is the first thing to break. The translation of a head term is often not what that market searches. In some markets the localised word for a game category is dead and the English term wins outright. In others a single translated word returns an entirely different kind of result: the bare word for roulette is a wheel-picker tool in most languages, and in several the phrase for table games returns board games. These are the checks that have to happen before a page is planned, not after it fails.

Then the facts break. A translated payments page lists methods the market cannot use. A translated bonus page quotes a currency nobody deposits in. A translated toplist recommends operators who are not licensed there. None of that is a language error, so no proofreader catches it.

How a market is built

Same sequence every time, whether it is one page or a whole market site.

  1. Research the market, not the translation

    New keyword research in the target language, checked against live results in that market rather than assumed from the English set. Where a translated term turns out to be dead, we say so and use what actually ranks.

  2. Re-derive the facts

    Which operators are licensed there, which payment methods are real, what the offers actually are, what the currency is. This is the step that gets skipped and the one that decides whether the page is useful.

  3. Write in the language

    Written for the market rather than translated into it, in that market's own script. Names, formats and conventions follow local practice.

  4. Check mechanically, then by hand

    Automated checks for leaked text from a sibling market, wrong-script content, and titles over the pixel limit for that language. Then a read-through. The mechanical checks catch what a human review cannot, especially in a language the reviewer does not read.

Two services, and they are not interchangeable

Ask for the wrong one and you get a deliverable that is useless for your purpose, so we confirm which you mean before starting.

Localisation

For market entry and organic growth. The page is rebuilt for the market from its own research and its own facts. Structure, headings and keywords all change.

  • New keyword research per market
  • Local offers, payment methods and operators
  • Local search intent decides the format
  • Titles and metas measured for that language

Faithful translation

For compliance and legal review. The source page is rendered exactly, so a reviewer who does not read the original can check it against the rules.

  • Figures and currency preserved exactly
  • Links and references left as they are
  • Structure kept, not improved
  • One document per source page

We run compliance translation batches for an operator client: source pages rendered faithfully into English, one document per page, delivered with a reference table mapping each translation back to the page it came from. It is the opposite of localisation, and that is the point.

Common questions

What is the difference between translation and localisation here?

Translation moves the words. Localisation re-derives the page for the market.

The offers differ, the payment methods differ, the licensed operators differ, and the search terms are often not the translations of each other. A page about bank transfers in Germany and a page about Pix in Brazil are not the same page in two languages, even when the English original was about payments.

Do you ever just translate?

Yes, when exactness is the point. Compliance reviews are the clear case. If a regulator or your legal team needs to read a faithful English version of a page, with the figures, currency and links preserved exactly, restructuring it would defeat the purpose.

We will tell you which of the two you are asking for before we start, because the deliverables look nothing alike.

Why only 17 languages when other agencies offer 30 or more?

Because 17 is the number we have delivered work in, counting a language once rather than counting its regional variants separately. It is worth checking the bigger numbers you are quoted: of the agencies we read while building this site, one claims more than thirty languages and names twenty-four on the same page, two of which are variants of the same language.

If you need a language outside the seventeen, say so. We will tell you honestly whether we can cover it or not.

How do you check a language none of us reads?

The same way we check English, plus one more step. Every claim is sourced, every market page is built from that market's own operator and regulator information, and the build is checked mechanically for text that leaked in from the wrong language or the wrong script.

On one nine-domain network, that process turned up English fragments left in page furniture, wrong-script characters in a Traditional build, and one market that had been built as a near-copy of its neighbour. The automated checks passed all three; a person reading the pages found them, and the checks were extended afterwards so they would not recur. None of it is visible to a reviewer who does not read the language.

Can you handle Simplified and Traditional Chinese separately?

Yes. The Traditional build has its own keyword research, checked against live results in Taiwan and Hong Kong rather than inherited from the Simplified set, because search behaviour and the set of operators differ between those markets.

The script conversion itself is done with a maintained character and phrase table and then read through, rather than retyped from scratch. Saying it was all written by hand would be a nicer story and not a true one.

Tell us what you need written

Send the market, the page types and rough volume. You get a scope and a price back, not a sales call.