Promuoversi online oltre confine: la localizzazione web del sito di Comfy Campers

It is a well-known fact that the World Wide Web has changed the way companies communicate with their target customers. Interactive digital communication in the business field has become a privileged advertising tool, which allows companies to reach larger audiences all over the world. The success of this form of communication has hinged, among other factors, on the development of the localisation industry. As Jiménez-Crespo states (2013:I), the significance of localisation lies in its bridging the cultural and linguistic gap between Web users from different geographical areas. This dissertation aims at presenting and discussing a localisation project from English to Italian focusing on the Comfy Campers company, a family-run company which hires Volkswagen campervans for various occasions. This aim involved an investigation into the fields of localisation and advertising communication. Furthermore, since visibility on the Web plays a pivotal role in promoting a company, the website itself has been optimised for Search Engines (SEO). For the purpose of localising and optimising the above-mentioned website, an extensive review of the literature was conducted into the different fields involved. This theoretical background provided a framework to motivate the decisions made in the practical part of this project. The whole work can thus be divided into a theoretical background, which provides an overlook on localisation, Web communication, advertising, and Search Engine Optimisation, and a practical part, which describes the practical project and illustrates the linguistic, cultural and technical choices made in the processes of localising and optimising for the Search Engines Comfy Campers website. In conclusion, the last chapter summarises the main issues raised in the previous chapters and offers suggestions for further investigation into the relationships between localisation, advertising and Search Engine Optimisation.