As readers of this blog well know, I often refer to China and Taiwan when making the case for avoiding the use of flags on a global gateway. There are many others reasons, of course, but geopolitical issues have become…
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 audience of drivers was being welcomed by the world’s automakers.…
If you don’t know what your mobile app weighs (in kilobytes), then it’s safe to say your emerging market strategy could use some tweaking. That’s not to be harsh, but to face the simple fact that mobile users in emerging…
#serveinmylanguage It’s more than a hashtag; it’s a social movement. And it’s growing. A movement among Indian consumers to force the vendors who depend on their business to actually support their native languages. As this Times of India article notes: From ATMs…
For quite some time people have asked me about creating a larger version of our Country Codes of the World map, something they could pin up in their conference rooms or on office walls. And a map without the legend,…
When I read about Swaziland’s recent name change, by decree, my first thought was: What about the country code? As in .sz? As far as I can tell, it’s way too soon to know if the president has thought this…
I’m happy to announce that I’ve updated my map of the world’s internationalized domain names for 2018: The map includes all ICANN-approved country code IDNs for the world — more than 50 across more than 30 countries and regions. I’ve…
As a font geek, I loved this promotion courtesy of the Republic of Lithuania to develop a font that draws on the signatures from the Act of Independence of Lithuania. You can even add your signature to mark the centenary…
I recently read The Chinese Typewriter by Thomas S. Mullaney. I love typewriters and languages, so this book was a sure thing as my interests go. And I learned a great deal. Perhaps the greatest takeaway was the degree to which…
I received my copies of the Japanese edition of Think Outside the Country and am very impressed. The book, like the English edition, is in full color and uses high quality paper. The book is published by Born Digital (in collaboration with Mitsue-Links) You can…
You hire a vendor to conduct a global survey. And let’s suppose this vendor refers to Taiwan as a country and the email goes out to people in China who believe differently, and they happen to be in a position…
I’m excited to announce the publication of The 2018 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. First, here are…
The Marriott website was taken down in China and Taiwan on or around January 11th. You can read why here. And here we are two weeks later and the websites are still blank — or nearly so. Here’s what I’m…
The short answer: It depends. The context of how you display this flag can make all the difference; for example, do you display the flag on a global gateway with text that reads Select Country or Select Country/Region? This may seem…
If you visit Marriott’s China website today you’re likely to see this: I dumped the text into Google Translate and here is what it loosely says: So what exactly happened here? According to Skift, Marriott sent a survey in Mandarin…