I’m excited to announce the publication of The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card. This is the most ambitious report I’ve written so far and it sheds light on a number of new and established best practices in website globalization. Here are the…
The death of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej has led to stores running out of black and white clothing as the population mourns its leader in color-appropriate clothing. What does this mean for website localization? Consider the Thailand home pages for…
I remember when Google Translate went live. Hard to believe it was 10 years ago. I remember thinking that this relatively new technology, known as Statistical Machine Translation (SMT), was going to change everything. At the time, many within the translation community were dismissive…
For the 2016 Web Globalization Report Card, we studied the following 15 consumer technology websites: Adobe Apple Canon Dell HP HTC Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Panasonic Samsung Sony Toshiba Xiaomi The consumer technology sector includes many of the most globally successful…
UPDATE: The 2017 Web Globalization Report Card is now available. I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2016 Web Globalization Report Card and, with it, the top 25 websites: Google Facebook Wikipedia Hotels.com NIVEA Booking.com Nestlé Pampers Adobe…
And so it has begun: The world’s biggest online shopping day. In China. More than $9 billion dollars was spent this day last year and experts are forecasting a number well north of that this year. As I’ve been doing for the past…
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 start with the Google Translate. This icon has not changed…
I enjoying watching how Western companies localize their websites and products to capitalize on Chinese New Year — the Year of the Sheep (or Goat). Like this gift card from Starbucks China: And this hero image on the Microsoft China home…
When you welcome visitors into your home, you probably don’t usher them directly to the basement. Yet when it comes to websites, this is exactly how many companies treat visitors from around the world. That is, they expect visitors to scroll down to…
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 Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas issue. On the other side of the…
From the Wall Street Journal: Brad Smith, Microsoft ‘s general counsel, tried to illustrate the problem Thursday at a technology conference by recounting a meeting a month ago with corporate-technology executives in Berlin. One of them came clutching a copy of…
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 2014 Web Globalization Report Card. English (US) is not counted.…
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 supported. I studied the localized websites. I interviewed the executives…
When I read government arguments in defense of the NSA, an oft-repeated line was: We’re not targeting Americans. We’re targeting foreigners. Foreigners. I really dislike that word. And I’m sure companies like Apple, Google and Facebook do as well. Why?…
I’ve written an article for client Pitney Bowes on pricing strategies in Asia. Here, for example, is how the iPad mini is priced in China: All those 8s are no coincidence. Find out why here.