It’s time for your website to go flag free
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 …
Software Localization
What’s the world’s most multilingual website? (2018 update)
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 …
To create a world-ready mobile app, think small, as in “lite”
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 …
Think Outside the Country (now available in Japanese)
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 top 25 websites from the 2018 Web Globalization Report Card
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 …
Can displaying the Taiwan flag get your website shut down in China?
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 …
Think Outside the Country is coming to Japan
I’m pleased to announce that Born Digital (in collaboration with Mitsue-Links) is publishing the Japanese edition of Think Outside the Country. The book will be available December 23rd and I …
Think Outside the Country: Coming April 10th
I’m pleased to announce the new book Think Outside the Country: A Guide to Going Global and Succeeding in the Translation Economy, due out on April 10th. Think Outside the Country is …
NOTO, as in No Tofu
First of all, I love tofu. But when you see it on a computer screen, it’s not so nice. Like those two rows of “tofu-shaped” objects shown below that indicate a …
On the importance of date display localization
The proper display of dates for each locale has become relatively trivial with libraries such as Globalize and yet I still encounter websites that don’t get it right. Case in point, I …
Do your web developers know about Globalize?
Today, the JQuery Foundation has announced availability of Globalize 1.0: Globalize provides developers with always up-to-date global number formatting and parsing, date and time formatting and parsing, currency formatting, and message …
WordPress now at 70 languages, and counting
This blog has been hosted on WordPress since 2002. Since then, WordPress has grown into one of the dominant publishing platforms on the Internet. And one of the most multilingual …
What’s the ROI of web globalization?
I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile. A few months ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly said this at an investor meeting: “When we work on making our devices …
Mozilla frees web browser from mobile language limitations: A Q&A
I was intrigued to read recently that Mozilla is working on updating the Firefox Android mobile browser, codename Fennec, to allow the browser to offer more languages than the underlying Android system currently supports. …
WhatsApp: Another “translation worthy” success story
I wrote recently that if you can make your product “translation worthy” the world will follow. Reading about Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp I went back and did some language crunching. …