NOTE: The following is the beginning of an article I published with Multilingual Magazine recently. You can read the full article at the link below (free registration required). Twenty years ago, Yahoo! was the world’s leading search engine. It had…
Apple’s recent developer newsletter caught my eye because, for once, localization was featured at the top: Apple is providing free training sessions focused on Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan — markets that Apple has invested heavily in over the…
What’s the world’s most multilingual website? It’s not Facebook. Not Google. Not even Wikipedia. It’s the website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, at just over 1,000 languages. But Google has been working since 2022 to leverage AI to take Google Translate…
Adobe pioneered the use of geolocation and localized overlays to improve the global user experience. As shown here, a visitor to the Adobe.com home page from Japan was greeted with the following overlay: The overlay allows the visitor to click…
Came across this web form during my Web Globalization Report Card research. When is an input field both optional and required? Here’s when. Thought you’d enjoy… PS: Have you tested your input forms lately?
There is no internationally accepted definition of what a “translation” icon should look like. But here’s the icon websites tend to use: You see it many places these days — most often used to indicate the availability of automatic translation,…
One of the takeaways from the Web Globalization Best Practices & Emerging Trends report is that language is a feature, every bit as important as many other features. After all, what’s the use of a cool new travel app if…
Website performance is like the weather — everyone talks about it but nobody seems to do anything about it. I read a great article recently on website performance — do check it out. In it, Tammy Everts writes: Slow pages…
Russian was once considered a “top 10” language — one that any company serious about global growth would support. But Putin’s horrific actions have put an end to that. Over the past two years, global brands have made a hasty…
I was happy to connect with Multilingual on the most recent Report Card. Here’s the interview!
A brief introduction to the 2024 Web Globalization Report Card…
Twenty years ago, Wikipedia was just a few years old and available in about a dozen languages. Today, Wikipedia supports more than 300 languages and has emerged on top of the 2024 Web Globalization Report Card. Here are the top…
As we say farewell to the Year of the Rabbit we greet the Year of the Dragon. And, with it, my whirlwind tour of global and local websites taking advantage of this holiday. And, yes, lots of celebratory red! Let’s…
Late last year Krispy Kreme entered its 39th foreign market: France. And it launched a localized website to match. The company plans to open 500 stores in France over the next five years. France is attracting a number of American…
For those of you keeping count this is number 20. Yes, as in 20 years. I’ll have much more to share about that later this year. But for now let’s focus on the next report. I’m in the middle of…