In search of a better translation icon
A few years ago I wrote about the translation icon and its many variations at that point in time. I thought now would be a good time to revisit this icon. Let’s …
When will more global websites support Arabic?
I read a brief report on digital Arabic content produced by the Wamda Research Lab, in partnership with Google and Taghreedat. A few data points jumped out at me, such as: By …
The humans behind machine translation
Google Translate is the world’s most popular machine translation tool. And, despite predictions by many experts in the translation industry, the quality of Google Translate has improved nicely over the past …
Google to the Internet: Go mobile or watch your sales rank fall
Four years ago, for the Web Globalization Report Card, I began noting (and rewarding) those websites that supported mobile devices. Even then one could easily see the virtual grounds shifting in favor of mobile …
You say Sea of Japan. I say East Sea.
Who said the life of a map maker isn’t interesting? Every other day it seems there is another disputed territory, which usually means another disputed name. I’ve already mentioned the …
Gmail leads the global (as in non-Latin) email race
It’s official. Gmail supports (to a degree) non-Latin email addresses. That is, you can receive an email from someone with a non-Latin email address, as well as send an email …
Adobe and Google release open source CJK font family
This is the result of a massive investment of resources and expertise — and I’m excited they’ve made it open source. From Adobe: Source Han Sans, available in seven weights, …
Gmail to be first major platform to support non-Latin email addresses
At the ICANN 50 conference Jordyn Buchanan of Google confirmed that Gmail would support EAI (email address internationalization) by the end of this month. This is significant news. But what does …
Google reenters the domain name business
It is being reported that Google is venturing into new territory by getting into the domain registration business. This isn’t completely accurate. Google dabbled its feet in domain registration years ago. And …
YouTube launches Thai site at YouTube.co.th
I too am surprised it took Google this long to launch a dedicated Thai website. YouTube has local versions in 61 countries and 61 different languages. Today’s launch in Thailand …
dotConfusing — What you need to know about the next wave of top-level domains
My latest post for client Pitney Bowes on making sense of the hype concerning the new generic TLDs. An excerpt: The first wave is rolling in More than 1,200 gTLDs have …
Wikipedia and the Internet language chasm
When talking about language diversity across the Internet, I like to include a visual that illustrates the language leaders of the Internet: This chart is based on data from the …
Google launches its first Japanese IDN
I’ve long talked about the importance of non-Latin domain names, or IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names). Google has gone live with one if its many IDNs: みんな. I want to emphasize here …
The top 25 global websites from the 2014 Web Globalization Report Card
UPDATE: The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card is now available. More than ten years ago I set out to create a report that benchmarked global websites. I looked at languages …
Google Translate turns 80, as in languages
From Afrikaans to Zulu, the evolution of Google Translate is one of Google’s greatest success stories that few people fully appreciate. Perhaps because Google is reluctant to release usage data …