Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
A timely article in The Wall Street Journal (that I only recently got around to reading): “The future’s not here.” American business people once saw China as dynamic, exciting and wide open. Not anymore. To which I ask: When was China ever “wide open?” An excerpt: …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
In 2016, more than 120 million Chinese traveled internationally. which is roughly the entire population of Japan (or Canada, Italy and Australia combined). And only 10% of the country has a passport. Imagine the travel industry when 25% of Chinese …
I was saddened to read that “the father of Pinyin” died this weekend in Beijing (though he did live to be 111 years old). While until now I never knew very much about the man himself — who daringly criticized …
China’s Alibaba is the creator (and exporter) of this one-day ecommerce extravaganza that takes place on 11/11. And despite being a one-day event the pre-promotion is in full effect. According to brandchannel, Alibaba is intent to set new records this year …
I visited the home page of the Chinese online travel agency website Ctrip recently and came across this odd flag: Just because the UK voted to separate from the EU doesn’t mean that it’s considering a merger with the United States (the …
According to People’s Daily, a number of runners in a South China marathon suffered from more than simply lack of hydration. Try lack of translation. The bar of soap shown above was included in each runner’s swag bag — apparently a number of …
I enjoying watching how Western companies localize their websites and products to capitalize on Chinese New Year — the Year of the Sheep (or Goat). Like this gift card from Starbucks China: And this hero image on the Microsoft China home …
So your company is successful on Facebook. And Twitter. And now you want to expand your social reach into China. Well, you can pretty much forget Facebook and Twitter, because these services are blocked. Instead, you’ll need to focus on …
Here is the image used on Apple’s China home page to announce Tim Cook’s apology letter regarding Apple repair and warranty “misunderstandings.” Here is The Wall Street Journal take on the matter. From a web globalization perspective, what interests me …
From an interesting (and concerning) CircleID post by Milton Mueller: Three Chinese engineers are proposing a way to alter Internet standards to partition the Internet into autonomously administered national networks, using the domain name system (DNS). The idea was not proposed …