Flags and languages don’t mix
As a Web globalization geek, I really enjoy visiting Web sites that do not use English as the default language — and then trying to find a link to English content. It’s a great way to understand what people who…
Month January 2008
Web globalization and the small business
The falling dollar is forcing a lot of small business owners to focus their marketing efforts outside of the US.The New York Times weighs in with a good article on small business owners thinking globally.Here’s an excerpt: The ebb and…
Hillary Clinton leads the presidential translation race, says Lionbridge
Lionbridge evaluated the Spanish-language Web sites of the presidential candidates and found that Hillary Clinton offered the highest percentage of translated content for Hispanic voters. Lionbridge evaluated the sites of Clinton, Obama, and Edwards on the Democratic site and Romney…
Facebook hits German competitors
If you’ve read this blog recently, you are aware of John’s reports on Facebook’s efforts to translate its Website into German and other European languages. I am a keen observer of the “kraut-sourcing” efforts. However, in Germany Facebook faces an…
It’s all about .me
Domain registry Afilias has won the rights, along with partners GoDaddy and the Montenegrin organization ME-Net to market and sell the new .ME domain later this year. .ME promises to become the next .TV, spurring addresses such as: Help.me Save.me…
China to overtake US in Web users … next month
According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China is poised to overtake the US in Web users very, very shortly. Here is a news article. CNNIC says that China now has 210 million Web users, an increase of…
.FR reaches one million registrations
France became a member of the million domain club with its one-millionth .fr registration on January 11th. Here are the top six country codes based on registrations: Germany: 11,120,000 China: 6,035,000 United Kingdom: 6,010,000 Netherlands: 2,545,000 Italy: 1,426,000 United States:…
Is Facebook “translation worthy” or just plain cheap?
I read at Design Across Cultures that Facebook is planning to use “crowdsourcing” to allow its users to create translated content. Crowdsourcing is a hot new buzzword that is best illustrated by Wikipedia — you take a lot of motivated…
Starwood Hotels broadens Chinese Web support
Starwood Hotels has announced that it has launched Chinese-language Web sites for all of its hotel brands — from Westin to Sheraton to St. Regis. The hotel chain had previously offered varying levels of Chinese support across its hotel brands…
Baidu Japan: Coming January 23rd
Motoko Hunt over at Multilingual Search writes about Baidu, China’s leading search portal, and its official entry into Japan As I mentioned in last month, Baidu has long had its sights set on entering the Japanese market. The launch date…
Language Weaver adds language pairs
Language Weaver has added five more language pairs to its repertoire: Arabic/Spanish Arabic/French French/Spanish Danish/English Greek/English What’s interesting here is that Language Weaver is moving beyond language pairs that include English. English is the “pivot language” of the translation industry,…