Anyone experienced tree testing of multilingual website?

Question

I work in a multilingual region, like many of us. My clients' websites are multilingual (often, there's a main language and sub-languages). When I perform a tree test on their structure, is it enough to test on main language or should I test for every language, since translation and cultural habits might come into play?

Answer 1

You need to test every language:

1. Translation could be done incorrectly - missing items, typos, bad correspondence between original term and translation within common context.
2. Cultural habits might come into play, as you mentioned.
3. Trees might be different for each language.
4. Translation may cause visual defects.

In general, multilingual website should be considered as many localized websites and common test procedure should apply for each of them.