Deglobalization & AI: The calm before the storm
While reviewing websites for the 2025 Web Globalization Report Card I was struck by two things: Combined, I believe we are in the midst of the calm before the storm. …
Machine Translation
Will Google retake the lead as the world’s most multilingual website?
What’s the world’s most multilingual website? It’s not Facebook. Not Google. Not even Wikipedia. It’s the website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, at just over 1,000 languages. But Google has been …
The inherent flaw of the translation icon
There is no internationally accepted definition of what a “translation” icon should look like. But here’s the icon websites tend to use: You see it many places these days — …
Language is a feature (to be promoted)
One of the takeaways from the Web Globalization Best Practices & Emerging Trends report is that language is a feature, every bit as important as many other features. After all, …
The 2024 Web Globalization Report Card is coming soon…
For those of you keeping count this is number 20. Yes, as in 20 years. I’ll have much more to share about that later this year. But for now let’s …
Massively multilingual
It seems like only yesterday (2009 actually) when Google Translate had reached 50 languages. And for the past few years it appeared that Google has largely plateaued at the low …
Neural machine translation is unlocking website content and connecting the world
The fact that neural machine translation has the word “machine” in it should tell you that this technology has been evolving for a very long time, to back when computers …
The top 25 global websites from the 2022 Web Globalization Report Card
I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2022 Web Globalization Report Card. This is the 18th annual edition of the Report Card, and it reflects another difficult year. And yet …
Browsing the Netflix “browse by language” feature
I think I spend more time browsing Netflix for something to watch than actually watching it. Which is why I was intrigued to see a new Browse by Language link …
Upgrade your Global Customer Experience strategy at Lilt Ascend, October 6-7
LILT, a Global by Design sponsor, is hosting the next edition of its popular Ascend conference on October 6-7. The event is designed to help you reach the 87% of …
Apple Translate expands to iPad and across apps
Apple may have been late to the machine translation game but they’re working to make up for lost time. They announced today that the Apple Translate app is coming to …
The global evolution of Apple.com
After posting my Web Globalization Report Card video I was asked to comment on the global evolution of a few websites. So I thought I’d put together a brief presentation …
COVID flattened the language curve, and that’s actually good news
I began the Web Globalization Report Card back in 2003. It became the first report of it kind to benchmark global websites and I’ve been publishing this report annually ever …
The top 25 best global websites from the 2021 Web Globalization Report Card
I’m pleased to announce the publication of the 2021 Web Globalization Report Card. This is the 17th annual edition of the Report Card, and it reflects a challenging year. Yet there …
Announcing the State of Localization survey
LILT, a Global by Design sponsor, is asking for those of us in the localization industry to give our thoughts on localization trends, best practices and our priorities for the …