Susana Turbitt, InterSol, Inc.

Economic slowdown…California energy crisis…Increasing unemployment…Higher energy costs… Recession…Headlines paint a bleak economic picture and businesses react by deferring all non-essential expenses. So, why even think of localizing your web site? Consider this:

	In Europe, the number of Internet users is estimated to grow by 54% this year, reaching 255 million by 2004. 1
	In Latin America, the number of Internet users is predicted to increase to 75 million by 2005. Online trading in the region is estimated to amount to $72 billion US dollars by 2005, with Mexico and Brazil dominating the region. 2
	In the Asia-Pacific region the number of mobile Internet users reached 34.4 million by the end of 2000. This represents a 29% increase in only 3 months. 3
	In the US, ethnic groups are predicted to spend 3.1 billion dollars on Internet access by 2005. This will be as much as the entire amount that was spent on Internet access in the year 2000. Hispanic and Asian Internet users are expected to grow more quickly than the number of those from other ethnic groups. 4
	The number of Hispanic households in the US that own PCs increased by 42.3 percent between Q1 and Q4 of 2000. The overall rate of technology adoption by Hispanics in the US has been 80 percent over the last two years, as compared with 21 percent for the overall US market. 5

All of this points out that companies that offer localized content will benefit from significant opportunities, even if they only trade domestically, particularly as more Spanish speakers access the Internet in the US. However, at this time, more than 60% of Fortune 100 Web sites offer only English content. The biggest hurdle appears to be the perceived complexity of software localization. What can you do to streamline the process? 

First, let’s take a moment to define a few terms. The Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) defines localization as the process involved “…in taking a product and making it linguistically and culturally appropriate to the target locale (country/region and language) where it will be used and sold.” Actually, the term localization derives from the term locale, which Webster dictionary defines as a place or locality especially when viewed in relation to a particular event or characteristic; a site; a scene. In this context, locale is a collection of standard settings, rules and data specific to a language and geographical region. For example, you could translate a web site into Spanish, but if all your Spanish-speaking customers are from Mexico, it may be more beneficial to localize it for Mexico, where the Spanish spoken is a different locale to the Spanish spoken in Spain.

To streamline the localization of software, the first step is to include internationalization in the product development cycle. LISA defines internationalization as “…the process of generalizing a product, so that it can handle multiple languages and cultural conventions without the need for redesign. Internationalization takes place at the level of program design and document development.” For example, ensure that the application supports double-byte characters, so the product can be translated into Chinese or Japanese. The Microsoft Web site http://msdn.microsoft.com/ has a wealth of articles on internationalization strategies that may be accessed through the Search function with the keyword internationalization. 

To adapt a Web site to the cultural and linguistic requirements of two or more locales is to globalize it. LISA defines Globalization as addressing “…the business issues associated with taking a product global…” Many of the decisions that web designers make during the design of the source language web site will have an impact on the ease and, therefore, the cost of globalization. For example, the number of graphics with embedded text that will need to be translated; the flexibility in the design of databases; allowing for text expansion in a tabular environment; avoiding hard-coding of image url’s (For example: http://www.yourbiz.com/images/image.gif). Adaptation will also be easier if you use generic icons. For example, the picture of a US mailbox as the symbol for e-mail may be confusing to a European. It is also important to pay attention to file structure. Using subdirectories for images and secondary pages instead of throwing them all together under the root directory will be very helpful during localization, particularly if many languages are involved. A very good source of information on globalization is Bert Esselink’s book: A Practical Guide to Localization.

In summary, you can lament the crisis caused by the current economic slowdown, or you can instead heed the meaning of the kanji Weiji that reminds us that opportunity is always present in the midst of crisis. Reaching out to a larger global audience will provide your business with the opportunity to capture a larger share of the online market.

References:  

1. eMarketer

2. IDC

3. Dataquest

4. Forrester Research

5. A Practical Guide to Localization, by Bert Esselink, Haarlem 2000, Johns Benjamins Publishing Company.

^{Back to top}