Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
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 leading brands… America’s biggest brands are increasingly multilingual
I number of years ago I virtually met a woman named Laurel Delaney. She had founded the consultancy GlobeTrade and had authored of a number of very good books on exporting, one of which you can learn more about here. …
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 Volvo Cars This year, Volvo unseated BMW to emerge number …
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 the first Report Card was a startup company by 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 from using flags on their websites within their global gateways. …
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 how multinationals refer to Taiwan on their websites, not just …
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 website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. As I noted in 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 audience of drivers was being welcomed by the world’s automakers. …
I was happy to have an essay published in the recent issue of Multilingual. In the essay I write: While Wikipedia, Google and Facebook are among the leaders in languages at 298, 172 and 107 respectively, they don’t come even …
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 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 …
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 …
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 …