China Blogs
A great article about the growth of blogging in China. Chinese also happens to be the fastest-growing language on the Internet.
Category Software Localization
Finally, A Search Engine For Bilinguals
Just when I thought I’d seen every type of search engine, along comes Babelplex. Babelplex takes a search string, translates it into another language and searches on both languages at once. Its name comes from the Web-based machine translation software,…
iTunes Japan in 2005
According to News.com, Apple is launching iTunes for Japan in March 2005. As I reported a few weeks agoiTunes is already localized for 12 European markets. Japan, however, will not be quite so simple due to the inevitable character set…
Apple iTunes Globalization, Continued
About a month ago I wrote about how iTunes had currently been localized for three markets. My how time flies. The last I checked the iTunes Music Store now supports 12 markets outside the US. Not too shabby.
Taking Video Games Global
I recently interviewed Heather Chandler, author of The Game Localization Handbook. Game localization is much more than a niche industry these days. Today, video games may be console-based, Internet-based, and even phone-based. It’s a fascinating, emerging industry. In the interview,…
Hands-On Tips For Web Globalization
The W3C Internationalization Working Group continues to add valuable resources for those who need hands-on information regarding Web globalization. Need to learn more about internationalized domain names, bidirectional text display, or multilingual style sheets? This is a good place to…
Red Hat to Add Support for Indian Languages
Linux developer Red Hat says it will add five new languages to its next generation of enterprise software – all Indian languages. Equally important, Red Hat plans to offer customer phone support in those languages. Although the company didn’t say…
World Wide XML
Here’s a meaty article from CNET News on the latest XML developments. According to the co-creator of XML, Tim Bray, XML owes at least some of its success to its native support for Unicode. Here’s a quote: XML has succeeded,…
Microsoft’s Global Blunders
CNET News features an entertaining article on some of the creative ways that Microsoft has offended people around the world through cultural and linguistic blunders. These anecdotes come from a recent presentation by a Microsoft executive, who is probably now…
Oracle Selects Idiom (Again?)
The title of this latest Idiom press release makes it sound as if Idiom just won the Oracle account. However, if you read past the first paragraph you’ll find that Oracle is not a new account. The deal appears to…
New Microsoft Globalization Resources
Microsoft has greatly expanded its globalization resources Web site over the past few years. Although much of it is geared toward software developers, Web developers will also find useful nuggets of information. If you haven’t been, it’s definitely worth a…
Localization Down Under
Here is a very nice article by Evelyn Olsen on the New Zealand translation industry. Her company is NZTC, and for those who manage competitive companies, I recommend taking a look at their Web site (excerpt below). They present bios…
Microsoft: Death by a Thousand Languages?
Microsoft likes to make a big deal of how global a company it is, and for good reason. The company now makes more money from outside the US than from within. But the company still has a long way to…
And Then There Were 3
The translation industry used to have four vendors that towered over everyone else: Bowne Global Solutions, Berlitz GlobalNet, Lionbridge, and SDL International. In September, Bowne bought Berlitz, and then there were three. Check out the article: Bowne translates strategy into…
Apple’s Mac OS X goes Arabic with Jaguar
I’m happy to see Apple launching the localized Arabic version of Jaguar so quickly. Read the MacWorld article.