Why Your AI Translation Is Losing Spanish-Speaking Customers

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone, my name is Armando Perez-Carreno and welcome to the Web Talk Show. Today we have Christina Spaulding with us from Manzanita Marketing. How are you Christina? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me on the show Armando. It's my pleasure Christina. You work with localization, international content strategy, super important topic nowadays. It's always been but ever more present today with the web and everything that's happening even with AI which we might talk about as well. So can you give us a little introduction to how you got into localization SEO and content strategy? Oh right. Um in grade school, I was given the opportunity to learn French. And I thought okay, that sounds great. I think my family's French. Um my family is not French. There's no trace. We're German and Swiss and a whole bunch of other things, not French. Um but my parents indulged me and said, "Sure, go ahead. Take French classes, why not?" Um I was privileged enough in high school to have a high school that also taught German. So my dad said, "Well, we are actually German so you should take German." I said, "But I'm taking French." And he said, "But you have to take German." So I took both. And I thought, "Well, this is something unique. You know, maybe I can sell this skill somehow." So in college I majored in French and German, picked up a marketing minor. And 2 weeks after graduation, I was fortunate enough to get an internship in Southern Germany where I was living and working at a German German company and I wound up staying for 6 years. So um I actually worked for a localization translation company as a project manager uh very early on in my career. So I know the nuts and bolts of old school translation processes. So translation **[00:02:00]** management, um translation memories, Trados uh version uh maintenance having to work with what was it then called desktop publishing, right? Uh work with the graphic designers to ensure that these print materials that we were creating instruction books for laptop computers and things like that. Um you had enough space on the page for all the content. Um as as you may know uh Spanish is like one and a half to twice as long as English. German's like twice as long as English. So when your source material is in English you have to build in buffer in a graphic design if you're doing print work. So that you can allow for those breaks and stuff that happen without breaking your entire design. Um so that was uh that was 19 that was 2001. So uh sharing my age a little bit but um that was kind of the kickoff for an international based career. Um as I mentioned, I was in Germany for 6 years. Um I also speak French, studied French, was in France. Uh but came back to the US and uh worked for a German company that had just recently expanded into the US. I was one of their first employees um in a team of four. We grew from four to 12 to 60. And they hired me because they're like "We really want to do well in the US but we're nervous about our English skills." And I was like "Your English skills are great. What are you talking about?" But they really wanted somebody native who understood the culture as well as the fine details **[00:04:00]** of how you express yourself. And it was a good investment for them because we were successful. We grew revenue 40% year over year for 4 years. Um but for me, what that showed is it's always helpful and often critical to have a native speaker in the loop. No matter what you're doing, if you're going from one language to another having that native speaker just gives you the full cultural context. It gives you the idioms. It gives you the slang. It gives you the phrasing that while not incorrect Yeah. just as a native speaker, you read it and you go huh? Uh okay. Well, if you want to eliminate that huh minute a native speaker will smooth that out. That's amazing. I I always bring that up when whenever I see a document, a poster, a site where it's in Spanish but you know it like it has mistakes. It's clear mistakes that any native or close to native would would be able to see it just right off the bat. So I always tell people like, "Why Why don't you just ask someone? You're going to print, you're going to spend this money printing this material. Why don't you just anyone? Just call someone. Just You can even call someone random in that country and ask them, does this sound right?" And they'll tell you it doesn't. So that's that's an excellent thing to consider. The recently there's a there's this pod Well, it's not it's a Now they have a podcast but it's this uh sort of man on the street interview type Tik Tok or Instagram Reels or whatever show called **[00:06:00]** School of Hard Knocks. And this guy, he's going and interviewing billionaires. And he uh the one of them stuck with me. There's this this guy he meets in the street and he's a billionaire but he's in I think he's in the UK or somewhere in Europe. And he says one of the reasons he made so much money was that his plumbing company when they opened up in the US, he put in someone from the US to manage it and everything. So the head of the company had to be from the States because everything around it because otherwise and and he got a mentor telling him that he had to do that. But I mean it makes perfect sense because otherwise people are like like what Why is Why is this guy from over there giving us this this uh or trying to lead this company that that's for more sort of a locally kept thing, right? So that makes that makes a lot of sense. How did you You mentioned at the very beginning that you started learning these languages and you said, "Oh, maybe I can make a service out of this." Like at an early age you were already thinking, "How can I make How were your parents entrepreneurs or where did you get did you get that spark?" Yeah, actually my my dad was a was an entrepreneur. He was in the insurance industry. Uh he actually works from home a lot. So um some of my earliest memories are my dad sitting at the kitchen table with stacks of papers all around. Um I mean that meant he was very active and present in mine and my brother's life and I think he subconsciously He didn't do it on purpose. It was never like a "You should be an entrepreneur." But he he walked the walk of doing the work wherever it needed to be done, however it needed to be done to succeed and to take care of his family. **[00:08:00]** So yeah, it was I was it was a not a "You should be an entrepreneur. We're a line of entrepreneurs." But a subconscious thing of there's dad doing the work. There's dad doing the work. There's dad doing the work. It doesn't have to be always in an office but you got to do the work to get the good things that you want. That's so true. And and it's very interesting that you started with that idea of how can I do something with this and then went after it. Some people decide, "Yeah. That's a nice thing. Maybe I can do something with it." And then they don't do anything about it. They don't move to Germany, right? What What was that like? How did you decide to just take the jump or take the leap and move so far away? Well, I already had a bunch of little jumps before that. Uh I had a professor in my freshman year of college who said, "Hey, you should apply for this um study abroad program in Quebec City, Canada." And I was like, "I'm a freshman. Why should I apply?" And he says like, "Do it." And I was like, "Well, okay. The worst that can happen is they say no." So then I applied and I got in. So my first jump was a summer in Canada. Coming from Chicago, that's not a far jump. Easy. It's more of a cultural jump because in Quebec City, they 99% of them speak French. If you speak English, you're a tourist and you're treated as such. So um then the next jump was a full semester abroad in France with my university. So a little bit longer time abroad, further away which I truly enjoyed. It was super fun. Um if anyone listening has kids or is in **[00:10:00]** college and you have a study abroad program option, do the study abroad program option. Um, whether no matter where you go, you will learn something interesting about human beings. You'll learn something about culture cultural. You'll learn about how people live their daily lives. How people live in Europe is dramatically different than how we live in the US. How people live in Asia is dramatically different from how people live in the US or Europe or South America. South American folks also have a different lifestyle than almost anywhere else. So, you will if you're open to it, you will learn something important. And if you take that and apply that to your life, you can make your life better by taking the best of what other countries do and combining it with the best of what you can do in the US and really shape a life that is tailored to you. So, um, the last step was off to Germany, but I didn't do that without support, either. Um, there is a college student group called AIESEC, A I E S E C. Um, it was started in France. It's completely student run. And what they do is they find internships for international students with local companies in their area. Oh, wow. So, the students go out to the companies and talk to the companies. The students go out to other students and recruit other students as potential interns. The students find housing for interns when they come. They do all of it. They organize everything. It's an amazing group. If you have an AIESEC chapter near you, uh, get involved. Like whether you're a **[00:12:00]** business owner, whether you're an interested person, whether you're a student, um, it's it's a great way to find international opportunities and really motivated individuals. Um, so one of my friends was an AIESEC member and she's like, "You should apply for an internship." And I said, "Yeah, I should, shouldn't I?" So, I did and um, I went through an interview process and I was accepted. So, I flew over to Germany. My AIESEC local AIESEC chapter welcomed me, got me set up and I was off to the races. So, if you're interested in moving abroad, you don't have to do it alone. There's organizations out there that can help soften the landing and provide you with some friend groups even in a country like Germany where it is harder to build friendships than it is here in the US for somebody who is not native. Um, but the more you know about the country, the better, but there's there's resources out there. You just have to look for them, find them, and vet them. Mhm. Um, so, yeah, it was a it was still a culture shock, even though I'd studied German for 8 years. Even though I had AIESEC backing me up, getting over there and actually dealing with the language on the daily, adjusting to life in a small town versus life in a in an American suburb, it was a it was a lot, but it was amazing and I just I had such a **[00:14:00]** wonderful time. Um, would absolutely recommend AIESEC to anyone interested in international internships. I'm glad you mentioned that because I when you said you wanted to I was imagining you just getting an offer somewhere and just getting on the plane and going, right? Which sounds frightening for a lot of people. Some people enjoy that thrill, but but others don't. So, it's great that these types of organizations exist and I'm sure there's more as well. Which is which is excellent. If if anyone knows of any others and wants to share them, drop them in the comments. That would be super swell because there's there's a lot, like you were saying. There's so much you learn by being somewhere else, even if it's for a stretch of a few weeks or a month or a few months or years, you're going to get something back. I remember when I was towards the the end of my college years, I went to a supercomputing conference in Hamburg and I went on my own. I just went, but then I did like a traveling trip around Europe on the trains and just yeah. And it was so fun and so interesting. Frightening at times, I guess, if if I don't think I was thinking about many of the possibilities, but but it was eye-opening to see, like you were saying, the culture, how every city is different, how people behave in the small towns, how transportation is completely different. Places where you would think people might be harder, they turn out to be very soft. And other way around as well. It's it's incredible. And having that opportunity or giving yourself that opportunity, I think it's excellent advice. I'm glad you shared that. **[00:16:00]** Yeah, if you want another resource, um, here in the US, the Rotary Club does foreign exchange programs or study abroad programs. So, if you don't have an AIESEC chapter near you, it is highly likely that you have a Rotary Club chapter near you. So, if you're interested, you have a child that's interested, you just know of people, maybe you're a teacher, and you're like, "I I'd love my kids to get this exposure." Talk to the your local Rotary Club and see what kind of opportunities that they have. Oh, that's that's good advice as well because I think we've all seen a Rotary Club nearby, but most of us don't have any idea what it is. And we just see it and if we don't know anyone in it, then it's it's a complete black box. So, I'm glad you mentioned that as well. We're getting a lot of interesting tidbits here. Um, there's something to be said about the the cultural context that you were talking about. This is not spoken of as much. There's the translation part, right? Super important. And if if those of you who have never done any print or web even design and you get asked to build something in English and then they're like, "Oh, now translate it." And you haven't had that experience where suddenly you don't have enough text or you have way more text that just spills all over the page, then you should try it. It's fun. But it's yeah, it's something to think about. But then there's that other part, which is the cultural context because whether you translate it with translation tool or a thesaurus or a you go to ChatGPT and like ask it or Claude or Gemini to translate it for you, it might do a good job. Like it might do a very decent job, especially the LLMs now. But there are still cultural contexts involved and it's very different if you're writing for a Mexican market than if you're writing to a Spanish market or an Argentinian market or a Chilean market. The wording is **[00:18:00]** different, phrasing is different, and there are slight variations that people can understand, but if if you're supposed to be tailoring the content to that country or you're trying to make them feel attended, they're they're going to be like, but is it though? Like It's the same as when somebody from the US reads something that was originally written for the UK. Mhm. We get tripped up on the word jumper and actualization written with an S instead of a Z or vice versa and gray with an A or an E. Um, but you'd mentioned briefly at LLMs. Yes. The one thing about LLMs, they're trained first on English. Mhm. And English does not have a formal informal difference. Yes. Ooh, that's a good one. Yes. When you submit queries to your LLM for any language that has different formality levels, you have to tell it what formality level you want. Um, I recently was just like writing a text message for a client. Yeah. Um, and my Spanish is not good enough for me to tell them what I wanted to tell them. So, I'm like, okay, I'm going to write it in English and I'm going to throw it into translate and we'll see what happens. And the first thing that I see come out says, "Te da da da da da." And I was like, this is a client. I cannot address them in that way. Um, so, like, okay, back to the drawing board. Do we have like a formal version? Is there a plural Is there anything where that I can look at and see that those markers for informal use are not visible? Mhm. Aha, there's one. Okay, there we go. That'll get my message through but so many other languages like I think almost all the romance languages **[00:20:00]** most of the Germanic languages certain Asian languages have different levels of formality that if the LLM doesn't realize that they exist or the preponderance of existing material is informal then it's going to deliver informal content first. Wow. That brings up gender too, right? Cuz Spanish has gender in the language like don't don't we don't need to get started on actual genders it's just like you speak differently when you're referring to a female version of a word versus a male version of a word and all the endings of are different because of that and it's true English does not necessarily have that and if it's trained like you say mostly on English language then it might think in English and then translate which is sort of the wrong way to go about it in some cases where if it was thinking in Spanish and then right so there's that and I I expect there are translation services that are better trained we just see right now that's the trend we see LLMs we see chat GPT and and I cloud etc. But there are tools for translation that have existed for many many years that are amazing and some have used AI in in a sense for for decades right those are proper tools to use for for anything that's really important I would say right but yeah there's so many nuances and then that's just languages that are relatively similar right I mean we understand that the letters the alphabet is pretty much the same except maybe two or three extra letters here and there but then what if you go to Cyrillic and what if you go to Asian languages that's **[00:22:00]** a whole they just they think in a whole other abstraction level than we do right? That is so critical so one of the things that's super important to me I think diversity in language is an asset specifically because when you start with a different language you start with a certain mental framework of kind of how the world works. There's a difference between a Spanish language framework because you do have your adjective endings that go through based on gender so you have a slightly different view of gender and how it works than an English speech speaker where gender really only comes up with entities that have obvious gender characteristics and then boats and cars for some reason. There's also certain Scandinavian languages that may have started with that like gender thing and have gotten rid of it over time so and I I don't remember which one I think it was Norwegian where they don't gender their nouns and have the adjective ending stuff that everyone else has but I am not a student of Norwegian I'm not a student of Swedish I could be wrong on that one so but one of the Scandinavian languages I actually looked it up I was reading a book by a Scandinavian author and the whole plot centered on the gender of the protagonist and you didn't realize it until the very end. Wow. The book works in English because you could get around it with some gender neutral terms. Yeah which would never work. **[00:24:00]** I think the Spanish and like French translation probably also work but the translator has to do a little bit more thinking before and they have to read the whole thing before they start to translate because if they don't they'll start translating in one way they'll catch at the end and they'll be like oh I I gave away the end ending or I didn't give away the ending I led people down the wrong path it's going to be so much more impactful now. But um yeah so for if we want to stick on LLMs for a little bit Yes. LLMs train it depends on how they train most of the time they train on existing content from the language and then you have a another piece of translation work that happens so the only caveat I have there is LLMs are trained on web content right? You can't feed content that isn't online into an LLM as far as I know. Half of the content on the web is English. So you have a massive amount of English to pull from and to train on. The next largest language segments are about 5% each. Wow. That includes Spanish which is spoken by millions of people one of the top five to 10 languages spoken in the world 5% of all the content on the web. Um I believe Russian is also like 5% ish also one of the top five languages spoken in the world. Uh Hindu **[00:26:00]** like 0.1% Really? One of the top five languages spoken in the world but when you think about India where most Hindu or Hindustani speakers live there the push is to work with English speaking tech companies so the content created is all in English and not in Hindu or Hindustani. Wow. So for me that presents a problem. I'm an idealist I believe the web should be free and open access for everybody to improve themselves get knowledge and grow. Now if half content in the world is all in English and you don't speak English that's a barrier to entry it's a barrier to accessing this knowledge. So how do we fix that? How do we make the web even more democratic even more powerful for the world to improve? It sounds so cheesy but we can do this we can shift by adding more content in languages that are underrepresented. So one of the things that I'm passionate about is encouraging US businesses to think about translating into Spanish. Um you know before we started recording we talked a little bit about why should a US business like offer Spanish well 15% nationwide approximately and then in certain cities I'm in Las Vegas 30% of Las Vegas speaks Spanish. Um you know in Miami you have an incredibly high majority of Spanish speakers. Cities in California **[00:28:00]** really high levels of Spanish speakers so the opportunities are there to reach a lot of people who can become clients who can learn from you who can buy products or services. So we start with the commercial stuff because that's kind of the easy fruit and eventually hopefully we can get into research papers and things like that getting translated into other languages as well. That's an excellent point. I remember when I used to do training on Facebook ads 20 15 around that that period and it was in Spanish. And the reason it was in Spanish was because there wasn't enough content in Spanish and we wanted we wanted to help people learn more. And I remember running the ads when you looked at the stats in the platforms you could very clearly see Los Angeles New York parts of Florida they had millions millions of people that spoke Spanish so when you were doing targeting it was like those parts were just just packed and so that's where you were targeting wouldn't target them as well necessarily right although there are a lot as well as we learned one time in there in the middle of a snowstorm that's another story it's it's incredible that in many places like the ones you mentioned there are communities where they just speak Spanish still. And that's okay because then their community that's what they speak. So, the doctor and the dentist and everyone that does services around that area needs to be able to understand and accept people that speak that language if they want to get that business **[00:30:00]** because otherwise they're missing out on servicing a lot of people. Right? We We recently were working on an AI voice receptionist for a company in California and a lot of their patients call in and they don't know English. They They always want the presiona dos para español feature, right? And so, building in the functionality so the agent could speak to them in Spanish was a big plus and when we did it the first time, which you were saying earlier happened, which was it would work but it was more of a Spanish Spanish, not not not a Mexican Spanish. And so, and then but in there you need more of a California Spanish, right? So, it's like you have to build in and so we had the staff go over it with their families and things like that and and build in contextual clues for the tool to be able to say the types of words informal and the like to make it work. What has been your experience in these types of situations? Um I always advocate for a native speaker to be involved if you're going to use AI translation tools. Um in the small experiments that I've done, AI translation tools can be helpful but they can also go off the rails with where you're like as a human you're like how did you get from there to there? Cuz this sentence has nothing to do with what you delivered. So you know, LLMs especially um uh generative LLMs hallucinate from time to time. And if you're charting really new territory and bringing in new concepts that aren't already available in the target language **[00:32:00]** Mhm. at a certain confidence rate then you're going to get some weird results. Yeah. So there's the formal versus informal which talked about. But there's also you know, if you're prompt correctly you should be able to manage that bit. But there's also the we are adding new knowledge to the knowledge graphs. LLMs work on a consensus basis. This is a new thing they haven't seen before. They're going to try to apply existing structures but sometimes they don't quite get it right. So having a native speaker will highlight those things where the sentence is structurally correct, it just doesn't make any sense in the context that you're talking about. Mhm. Um it will also having a native speaker also as you've mentioned Peruvian Spanish is different from Cuban Spanish is different from Mexican Spanish is different from Spanish Spanish Spanish. You might be able to prompt some of that. Um especially Castilian Spanish versus Mexican Spanish like hey, give me yes yes versus yes yes and X. Mhm. Um then you should get a more localized result. But if you're going for one of the other dialects it it's going to be harder for an LLM because the corpus that they're looking at is smaller. Mhm. Right? Yeah. It I'm not sure what the rate is on Colombian uh businesses creating their own content or Colombian um citizens creating content in Colombian **[00:34:00]** Spanish. Mhm. But I'm pretty sure it's smaller than the number of Mexican companies creating Mexican Spanish or American companies creating Mexican Spanish to target Mexican consumers. So, we're getting a little bit of US bias in if you think about Spanish as all variations of Spanish to get the 5% versus all variations of English 50%. Within that 5% slice how much is Castilian? How much is Mexican? How much is Cuban? I'm going to guess there's going to be a quite a bit of Castilian Spanish from Europe companies working with within the EU and then there's going to be significant Mexican Spanish because Americans tend to think that if we're going to target to Spanish speakers within the US it's going to be Mexican Spanish. Not always true depending on where you are. Oh, for sure. Yeah, especially in the East Coast it's going to be more of the Caribbean island Spanish than Mexican Spanish. Yeah, so it winds up getting very complex the more granular you try and get. Um and that's why having a native speaker for whatever you're doing is really going to help you deliver a translation that either is going to be acceptable to the most people or acceptable to the people you specifically are targeting. You know, if you are a lawyer in Miami and you're trying to get to Spanish-speaking clients that live there then you're going to want to have Miami dialect. If you're targeting the Cuban population within Miami, maybe you want to have Miami dialect and also a Cuban dialect as well. That's cuz it's two different **[00:36:00]** two different dialects in the same geographical area. Now, whether financially you want to maintain three web pages for one set of content like it those are questions that you should discuss internally as an organization. But um the the question is definitely complex when it gets to Spanish and who are you targeting? What do they speak? How do we deliver content to them best? Cuz at the end of the day you want the people that you're talking to to be able feel comfortable enough to take an action. Sign up for a newsletter, purchase something, go to an event, whatever it is. And if the language doesn't support the trust then they're not going to take the action. You bring the having a native speaker concept often and I don't think people realize the importance of native speakers, not necessarily native to that dialect, right? But but native speakers and the importance in people's lives. We recently had Joshua Gold, he's the CEO from The Big Word and I didn't know this. They like police departments and all all other like hospitals, courts, other government entities around the world contract these types of businesses to have people to translate on demand. So, if someone gets arrested or they need help in the hospital, there has to be someone that can translate for them and they have to actually know what they're saying. And the amount of usage of this translation around the world is impressive. I had no idea. I only knew I knew I certainly because we have a friend in North Carolina that sometimes **[00:38:00]** does that sort of translation services in person in the hospital cuz they're in sort of the um medical space but but the fact that there's this this huge organization that serves all of these that's just one example, a small example of the priority that the governments are putting into being able to assist people even even people they're arresting, right? Because then people think, oh, you're being mean to the people you are not necessarily. I mean, they're doing a they're doing the big effort to do this and be expense. So, what does that tell us about businesses? Businesses should also take a little bit from that book and see, okay, how can I serve my local audience so that they can I can provide it. And sometimes we want to like it's hard as a business owner. You You say, well, I have it in English. Well, I want to maybe put it in Spanish or French or Chinese or German but having built many websites throughout the years for many clients, building in translation is not the easiest thing depending on the platforms you're using etc. It's not like you just add the words. You many times have to add a translation layer. You have to add another service that you put on top of your system that then you can use to add translation. So, what are your recommendations in this space? Let's say someone comes in and they say, I I understand, I got the point, Christina. I would want to go in and and add Spanish content for example. What can someone do in order to achieve that if they already have a website and it might not have localization options? Um start by looking at the platform that you're on. Some platforms have translation tools built in. Mhm. Like Wix has a translation function. So, take a look at that. See if that's going to work. Um I believe Squarespace has a translation function. For WordPress, it's a plugin. There are at least six translation plugins that I **[00:40:00]** can think of off the top of my head that you can use. There's free options, there's paid options. There's options that include AI translations, there's options that are like Nope, you're on your own for translation. We're just organizing the files for you so that you can create your hreflang tags and it's easy to connect like languages together and your menus are all in the same language and they go to language pages that match your target language. Mhm. I If you've developed a a few multilingual sites or even one, you you realize that oh there's a hidden string somewhere in a button or a image overlay that Where Where do I find that little string? Right right there. I can see it. I just don't know where it is in the back end. You have to pull that out. The simpler your site is, the easier it is to translate. Mhm. Mhm. The more complicated your site is, the more tech technical technically savvy it is. You have a higher risk of like missing one of those sales banners um breadcrumbs or field descriptions in a form. Mhm. Like it's the little details that you're like oh, I forgot to translate name to nombre. Mhm. I have to go back in. I have to fix that because if a Spanish person is reading this and everything's in Spanish and then it's asked for a name, telephone, address instead of nombre telefono um dirección, yeah. Then you're Yeah. You've built all this trust and then you lose it all in just a second. Mhm. So, **[00:42:00]** um But But you bring up a very important point. It can be relatively easy. So, I'll give you an example for those if you if people want my technical point of view. It could be easy if you just have like an HTML site. So, if an HTML site or you live coded a site it's just HTML, yeah, for sure. And you can even tell your LLM, make sure it's localizable and it'll do it for you and then all the strings and everything will be localizable. So, it's actually easier now than before to prepare it. But if you're using WordPress like you were saying there's a lot of nuances in WordPress. Because as you said, you could use what? Polylang, WPML, GTranslate, there's Weglot, there's there's a bunch of different tools. Some of them are good, some of them are not that good. Some of them will affect your performance dramatically. So, you need to make sure you have a beefy server to support it. Some of them will duplicate your content like WPML if you have products you'll have like products in English, products in Spanish. Like it'll have two actual posts for everything and then it's good for for SEO and other things. But it means you have to manage all of it and then inventory and other things might become interesting or any other downstream integrations that you might have become an issue. So, why do I bring this up? Because then people like Christina might get customers that say oh, this looks relatively simple. So, for some people it's going to be simple but for some people you're going to have to spend some money to get it done because like you very wisely said some things are in the database. Some things are in the actual code. Some things are translatable and some are not because depending on who built that other plugin that the site is the the person who ever built the site if they didn't use localizable strings which is a technical thing, don't worry about it, people. It's It just means that it's just going to say name and there's no way around that. There's no way to change it unless they put a special type of code that that makes it be able to be translated by PO editor or other other tools that **[00:44:00]** allow you to do that. So, yeah, it can become a real monster to translate and then you're having to do some hacks where you're like reading the text in real time and translating it but then it affects performance as well. So, many things to consider. And I've I've found myself wondering sometimes like does it make more sense to use a tool like Weglot, right? Have you used Weglot before? I have. Yeah. And what's what's your experience like? From what I understand, these tools are more of a a layer on top of and they sort of they allow you to do all that translation off your site so you not affect performance and it but at the same time it just brings everything up when it's needed, right? Is that that's sort of how it works? Um In some cases, yes. So, I I um I have a SEO background as well and so my emphasis is always going to be think about things from an SEO perspective as well, right? So, when it comes to things like Google Translate or translation tools that serve up a layer of content on top or instead of your English content, I think you wind up missing a massive opportunity for SEO work. Mhm. Right? If If If Google's not seeing or AI tools now, right? AI search is a thing. If the content is only served on demand, is it shown? Like does Google catalog that and do AI tools see that if it if they're not searching for Spanish, then they're never going to trigger it. They never pull it up. They never see it. Well, you've put in all of this work to make your stamp in your target language and then you miss all the SEO benefits. So, I I know it complicates your structure and all of a sudden you've got **[00:46:00]** twice as many, three times as many, four times as many pages because you have all your pages in Spanish and English and French and German. That's what my site is set set up with. Spanish, English, French, and German. So, um Well, Spanish is the opportunity. French and German I speak. So, like I'm actively recruiting for those languages. I believe I can provide a very unique value to them. Um And I have team members who do the same for Spanish. Because I am not a native to Spanish speaker. I have not put in the time. I need to make sure that I have people who do. So, um I believe having the content on site even if served dynamically but having it on your site where it can be crawled and indexed Mhm. and referred to is a SEO benefit. So, I'm not against Weglot. I feel like no, this is the thing. I'm absolutely using this. Okay, I'm not going to fight you. Um but if you come to me and say hey, I'm looking at a WordPress installation. I want two to three languages. Then I'm going to be like okay, Polylang, WPML, both really stable. Pros and cons. Here's like like let's make a choice between a few of these solutions. Mhm. Um The other thing I like about some of the more traditional plugins rather than like Weglot's like Hey, we'll offer you X number of translations and we'll AI do it, which is convenient. But then you're constantly paying for new translation. Mhm. If you have a native person and it's **[00:48:00]** easy for them to do a lot of that work, then there's a cost-benefit analysis to do we want to go with a a Weglot type service or do we want to go with something more traditional that maybe integrates with DeepL Mhm. or so that you can choose when you pull in Yeah. AI translated content more easily rather than it defaults like you create the page and kind of defaults to translating all your stuff and charges you for it. Right. Um So, I am agnostic as to what plugin as long as the customer has a reason for wanting the plugin they want and the plugin does what it says it's going to do and that it delivers like for me delivering an SEO benefit is something that I look for in plugins that I use. Yes. That makes sense. What about TranslatePress? Have you used that at all? I have not used TranslatePress yet. I I remember we've we've used many of them through the years. WPML became a little too big for some cases where where it was the overhead was was large. But like everything, I mean, I don't see why they couldn't have gotten better with time. They're they're probably the ones that have been there the longest. Um TranslatePress was great. We had some great experience with it but at the same time we had some issues with some things, but their team was really good. I remember that about being and we would say, "Well, we can't find the string." They would say, "Oh, use this way of figuring out what string and then they would help you." There was actually people there. They would help you find that out and and put it in and and having integrations with DeepL. So, people who don't know what is DeepL? It's uh **[00:50:00]** Oh. It's Yeah, it's a translation API, basically, right? Yeah, it's um it's an AI-powered translation tool. Um it has a standalone web interface. You can use it as an API. Um one neat thing about DeepL is that it's not um it's a more deterministic LLM. Mhm. So, with a probabilistic LLM like ChatGPT, generative LLM like ChatGPT, it's programmed to think creatively to resolve a the problem. So, that's how you get those hallucinations. With a deterministic LLM, it's it's not as aggressively problem-solving and creative. And you are more likely to get more consistent results. So, if you say, "Hey, I had a good day today." You're going to get a very, very similar result every time. Whereas, with a ChatGPT translation, you'll get similar similar results, but the probability of those results varying is higher. Yeah. Oh. It's a great way to So, to put it. Yeah, and when we did, we had a client in uh Quebec, actually. And they had the site in English, French, of course. And um German, I believe. And they used DeepL. And this was a long time ago, before all the LLM stuff came along. And it worked great, even back then. So, now, these tools it's good to know that these tools exist. Like, use the LLM for what they are good for, but then if you can, even if you're vibe coding something, you're asking, "Now, build it in Spanish." That's fine, but why don't you tell it, "Okay, build the structure, but then go and talk to DeepL" or something a tool that's specific for that to do the translation, then just put in the text, right? You don't need actually have to waste tokens translating. Have a real translation tool do the translation and then just bring it into your to your content, maybe. Yeah, I've used DeepL for **[00:52:00]** uh quite a few pieces of content. And it's been great until it's not. Mhm. And that's when you're like, "Oh, okay. Good thing that I have somebody native reading this over." Yes. Yes. So, uh and that's with every LLM. Um whatever you choose to translate, okay, great. More power to you. Feed your corrections back into the LLM afterwards. Cuz that'll improve its accuracy. So, yeah. That's great advice, too. If someone wants to start doing this on their website, they maybe they want to trans start translating some of their content or the full website, etc. And they want someone to help them, someone like you, and Manzanita Marketing. Uh I love the name, by the way. Thank you. It's uh how how do they reach out? How do they find you um to be able to to get more information about about what what path they should be following? Yeah, I'm available at ManzanitaMKTG. Um that's my website. That's also most of my social handles. Manzanita m a n z a n i t a m k t g. Um I am available on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Um the best way to get in touch is my website or email info@manzanitamktg.com. Excellent. I'll put those in the show notes, as well. Christina, you've shared such valuable advice. We haven't talked too much about localization on the show, except, of course, on the show with the Joshua, but this went very deep into what we should think about when being a business owner and what what we should be doing to service our local audience and and I really learned **[00:54:00]** a lot. I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing all of this. And for everyone who's listening, if you haven't liked and subscribed to the show, please do so. And please be sure to follow Christina, as well. I'll leave those links in the show notes, as well, so they can uh find you in the socials, as well. Thanks a lot, Christina. It's been a blast. Thanks, Armando. It was a pleasure. Bye.