Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
Last year, I wrote an essay for Multilingual in which I noted that the world’s most multilingual website isn’t Google or Facebook or even Wikipedia. It is the website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. As I noted in …
Did you know that (US) English accounts for fewer than half of all WordPress interfaces currently in use? As you can see below, courtesy of WordPress, English still technically accounts …
I had an OpEd published this week in the Los Angeles Times about the importance of languages — and the slow but steady increase in languages supported by the world’s …
For the 2019 Web Globalization Report Card, we studied the following 16 automotive websites: Audi BMW Chevrolet Ford Honda Hyundai Land Rover Lexus Mercedes Mini Nissan Subaru Tesla Toyota Volkswagen …
According to the 2019 Web Globalization Report Card, 32 languages is the “average” number of languages supported by the leading global brands.
A little more than 15 years ago, I began benchmarking websites for a new report I had in mind, tentatively titled the Web Globalization Report Card. The number one website in …
Lunar New Year has arrived and, with it, the Chinese New Year (and related Asian New Year celebrations). As I’ve done a few times in the past, I thought I’d …
In 2008, Google launched a project called Knol. Remember it? It was designed to replace Wikipedia. Google apparently wasn’t happy that so many of its visitors were quickly abandoning it …
A timely article in The Wall Street Journal (that I only recently got around to reading): “The future’s not here.” American business people once saw China as dynamic, exciting and wide open. Not anymore. To which …
Google Translate is the world’s most popular translation tool. The company says it now translates 30 trillion sentences a year across 103 languages. The key data point here is the …
I’m pleased to say that, based on the websites I study regularly, we’ve reached “peak flag.” In other words, at a high level, companies are now beginning to move away …
Verisign has owned rights to the .com domain for many years, and profited enormously. So it’s no surprise that the company has been eager to see continued profits from language/script-specific …
If you are flying the Taiwan flag on your website, consider yourself warned. By China. As I’ve written many times over the past year, China is paying close attention to …
A few months ago, I wrote an essay for Multilingual in which I noted that the world’s most multilingual website isn’t Google or Facebook or even Wikipedia. It is the …
It’s been a month since women have been legally allowed to drive in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I wanted to get a sense for how this massive new …