Browser translation vs a translated site
Chrome and Safari translate any page for the visitor who asks. What changes when the translation is yours, on its own address, and what stays the same.
By FluentC2 min read
Most browsers can translate a page. Chrome offers it in the address bar, Safari has it in the menu, and the assistants built into browsers will do it too. One click, any site, including yours.
So what is the difference between that and a site translated with FluentC? Mostly where the translation happens. Everything else follows from that.
Where it happens
Browser translation happens after the page arrives, in the visitor's browser, on that visitor's copy of the page. Your server sent English. The visitor's screen shows Spanish. Nothing in between knows.
A translated site happens before the page arrives. The visitor asks for es.yoursite.com/about/ and the server sends Spanish. Every visitor, every search engine and every assistant that fetches that address gets the same Spanish page.
Side by side
| Browser translation | A translated site (FluentC Domains) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who starts it | The visitor, every time | You, once |
| Where the words are made | In the visitor's browser, after the page loads | On the server, before the page is sent |
| The address | Stays in the original language | Its own: es.yoursite.com, yoursite.de |
| What search engines index | The original language | Each language, with hreflang linking the versions |
| What an assistant can link to | The original page | The page in the visitor's language |
| The words | Different for each visitor; nobody at your company has seen them | The same for everyone; you can read and edit them |
| Product names, legal lines | Whatever the browser decides | Whatever you decide: edit them, or mark them as not to translate |
| Repeat visits | Translated again each time | Translated once, then served from the saved translation |
| What you add to your site | Nothing | One snippet for the language switcher |
What stays the same
Both are machine translation. FluentC translates with AI, and so does the browser. The difference is not that one of them is written by a person. It's that one of them is a page and the other is a trick of the screen. A page can be found, linked, shared, edited and fixed. A trick of the screen can't.
When each one is right
Browser translation is right for the visitor you never planned for: someone reading your site in a language you don't serve. It's good that they have it.
A translated site is right for every language where you want to be the result, rather than the thing someone translated after finding you some other way. For those languages, publish the pages. Domains does it with no plugin. On WordPress, there's a plugin.
Related: FluentC vs Google Translate covers the widget version of the same question, and why your site still needs translating in the age of AI is the longer argument.
