As the site manager for acquia.com, I had a lot to think about when we originally decided to translate the site into other languages. Why are we translating? What will we be translating?
How will we handle pages that aren’t translated? What modules do we need to add? What translation services will we use? How will we maintain all languages? What are the best ways to achieve my goals in Drupal 7? My past experience with translation in Drupal was with a Drupal 6 website and we did a multisite install, so we shared modules and themes but had separate websites and databases.
Why are you translating your website?
There are many reason to translate your website: increase site traffic, increase sales, competitive edge, courtesy for customers. Acquia was looking to start expanding business in the French speaking market so we kicked off our first website translation effort in French. Since we have launched our French site, we have increased our site traffic from France by 30 percent.