When it comes to web globalization and, in particular, global navigation, the general rule about flags is to avoid using them. By avoiding them, you avoid stepping into any number of politically sensitive issues. Nevertheless, companies love to use flags…
From SharePoint to Documentum to Interwoven, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software provides the information infrastructure for large enterprises, both internally and externally. And although most ECM developers will eagerly say their software is “global” — not all software is equal…
When I read about the announced merger between United Airlines and Continental, I began wondering which web site would win out over the other. As of now, there is a new merger web site that features a hideously merged logo:…
Two months ago I wrote about an effort to evaluate the quality of the three major free machine translation (MT) engines: Google Translate Bing (Microsoft) Translator Yahoo! Babelfish Ethan Shen has wrapped up the project, soliciting input from more than…
It’s almost here. Just a month away. The 2010 World Cup! There are 32 countries competing in the World Cup, which means 32 country codes. In celebration of those 32 ccTLDs, I created the visual above (and one other). You…
Facebook has demonstrated that you can crowdsource translations with high quality and rapid turnaround, leading many other companies to ask how they too can leverage the crowd to translate their content. Enter Adobe and Lingotek. Adobe has recently begun leveraging…
ICANN announced today that its first full-length IDN has gone live. Here it is: Give it a test drive. I just did (on the Mac) and Firefox, Safari, and Chrome all worked fine. Here is Safari: Safari is unique…
From today’s Wall Street Journal: Nike Inc. aims to boost annual revenues more than 40% to $27 billion over the next five years by adding new stores and rapidly expanding affiliate brands such as Converse, Umbro and Hurley. The sneaker…
As Shanghai cleans up its more humorous Chinese to English mistranslations, some folks are feeling wistful. Check out the NYT slideshow. Also, I was just told that the Telegraph has quite a trove of mistranslated signage here.
I’m pleased to be speaking on a topic near and dear to my heart — the best practices of global websites. Lionbridge is hosting the webinar and attendance is free. The date and time is May 20th at 12:00 PM…
Since I’m on the topic of Facebook and its “like” button, I just received an email from Air France that linked to, what else, an Air France Facebook page: www.facebook.com/airfrancemusic And here is why this page is worthy of a…