John Yunker is founder of Byte Level Research and author of the widely acclaimed book, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies and editor of Global By Design.
He has covered the emerging field of Web globalization for half a decade and has published a wide range of reports dedicated to best practices in Web localization and internationalization.
About this blog
Going Global focuses on the risks and rewards of expanding into new geographic and cultural markets, from Web globalization to international marketing to global usability.
In the August issue of Global By Design, in the article Machine Translation: The Next Generation, I introduced statistical machine translation (SMT):
SMT is a data-driven translation technology. Rather than relying on a dictionary of translations and rules, it starts with data in the form of lots and lots of source and target text. The statistical process involves analyzing this data and identifying patterns. By analyzing millions and millions of words, the software gets pretty good at “guessing” how to translate a given text string. “We’re not really translating,” said Language Weaver CEO Bryce Benjamin. “What we’re really doing is a probability forecast.”
Language Weaver has been one of the pioneers in SMT but has focused only on the government sector primarily serving intelligence agencies.
Until now.
Language Weaver this week launched the “Customizer” and targeted it at large enterprises and government bodies. What makes this tool so unique is that a company can very quickly adapt it to its specific industry and the software will continue to improve in quality as more translations are processed.
According to Bryce Benjamin, “The Customizer allows each customer to create, within just a few hours, a unique set of translation engines that cannot be duplicated by anybody else without access to the same data resources.”
However, the Customizer is not for everyone just yet. For starters, the software currently only supports the following language pairs:
-> French <-> English
-> Spanish <-> English
-> Arabic <-> English
-> Chinese <-> English
-> Hindi -> English
-> Somali -> English
The other two obstacles are pricing and the minimum database of translated content required to get started. For a large enterprise, these obstacles are easily overcome but small businesses will need to wait until a low-end product is launched, or until Google launches its free SMT product, possibly as early as 2006.
I'm glad to see Language Weaver going after enterprises and I think they will find takers, though a good deal of education will be required. Machine translation is still widely viewed as not-ready-for-prime-time technology. I do believe that SMT, over time, will be a very positive development for Web globalization, helping companies publish a great deal more content for local markets, increasing sales, and better serving customers.
I'll have more to say on Language Weaver in the November issue of Global By Design, due out later this week.
TransPerfect Translations announced today that it had acquired Crimson Language Services. According to the press release, the "merger creates a newly-formed Life Sciences Division that combines Crimson’s ISO 9001:2000/ISO 13485:2003 certified quality system and patent-pending risk management methodology with the production resources and localization talent of TransPerfect and its software localization unit, Translations.com."
Crimson is a well-regarded agency with a solid client base in the life sciences and financial services industries. I don't know what the purchase price was but strategically it makes sense. More important, given the fragmented nature of the translations industry, this type of merger is a sign of things to come.
Two thoughts...
If you're a small translation agency: Specialize now or struggle later
If you're a small translation agency worried about competing with the "big boys" like Lionbridge or SDL, find a industry vertical or two that they have done a relatively poor job serving thus far and one that has good growth potential. Life sciences, for example, has been a key vertical because clients will pay a premium for quality. This doesn't mean you won't pitch other industry opportunities as they arise, but you do need to start specializing. Clients are getting savvier in how they select agencies, which means they want agencies who know their industry inside and out. Vertical specialization is the way to create deep and long-lasting client relationships. Also keep your eye on value-added services, like source content editing, interpreting, local-market keyword advertising support, and more.
If you're a translation buyer: Don't buy from a "one size fits all" translation agency
No agency is an expert at every industry, despite what they will tell you. The first thing you should do when evaluating potential agencies is take a good look at their client roster. Then you should call a few of their clients (clients that are in your industry) to get a feel for the agency's track record. The TransPerfect acquisition of Crimson is good news for clients, because it combines in-depth industry expertise with the IT skills and software of a much-larger localization vendor.
According to Internet Retailer, Tiffany has launched a Canadian e-commerce site, with a selection of 3,000 products. Competitor Blue Nile launched a site for Canada in January of this year.
This is Tifany's fourth localized Web site -- and surely not the last. The company already gets 40% of its revenues from outside the US, mostly from retail stores, so following with e-commerce sites is the next logical step.
According to an ACNielsen study of 21,000 people in 38 countries, more than 627 million people have shopped online, including over 325 million within the last month.
Highlights of this very interesting study are:
Europe and North America have the highest incidence of online shoppers, with Germany, Austria and the UK topping the list, with at least 95 percent of Internet users having purchased online. In the UK and Germany, about two-thirds of these web users have made a purchase within the last month. (UK and Germany also happened to play a major role in eBay's strong 3Q revenue numbers)
In Asia Pacific, South Korea and Taiwan rank highest, with at least 90 percent of respondents claiming to have ever made a purchase online, at least six in 10 of whom have done so within the last month.
Methods of payment vary dramatically by country. While credit cards are the preferred method globally, Cash-on-delivery is the most popular payment method in China. In Japan and Taiwan, payment through a convenience store is an important online purchase payment method.
South Koreans are also the most likely to buy cosmetics/nutrition supplies online (34%), three times higher than the global average of 10%.
And I'll leave you with a quote that should serve as a call to action for any business that thinks ecommerce is something largely practiced only in developed markets...
“Our recent e-commerce studies clearly show an upward trend in global online shopping,” said David Boyd, vice president of Internet Industry Research at ACNielsen. “While there is growth in nearly all global markets, we see that the lesser developed markets are maturing faster than many of their more developed counterparts. It will not be long before we have a nearly level playing field across the globe.”
Of course it had to happen. Once Weblogs became a profitable busines, it was only natural for people to try to expand these Weblogs into new markets -- and new languages.
The first major blog to do this was Engadget, which I've written about before. The site is now offered in Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, and Spanish. My understanding is that the blog has local editors who do their thing in their native language. Things get interesting when news items cross over and are translated between the various sites.
Not surprisingly, competitor Gizmodo has also been expanding outside the US. Gizmodo teamed up with VNU Business Media to launch seven sites for the European market.
What particular steps do you take when internationalizing a blog? Language is an obvious issue. Are there other, less obvious ones?
Gaby Darbyshire: Local content and flavor is important: with gadgets, for example, there will be local review sites, manufacturer sites, ecommerce outlets, et cetera. Tone will also vary by country: it doesn't make sense to have someone sitting in New York writing a site for the French market. There will also be local stories that a U.S. blog wouldn't necessarily pick up on. So probably only 70 percent or so of the content is a direct translation.
Now if an upstart blog company knows how important it is to have local content and flavor on its local Web sites, why doesn't a company like GE offer local flavor and content on all of its local Web sites? This will be a topic for another day.
So what blogs are best suited to go global? According to Gaby "Tech and tech-related blogs are really the best for internationalization ... Entertainment or news blogs are harder to export because the content is so specific to a particular culture, though obviously one could have a completely localized version rather than a full or part translation."
Years ago I remember listening to the pundits who said that Starbucks wouldn't make it in the UK - a country where tea was the default beverage of choice. But Starbucks is proof that just because a market appears predisposed "not" to like your product, that doesn't necessarily mean they won't like your product. Habits change and every new generation likes to set itself apart from the generation that came before.
Deborah Ball of The Wall Street Journal wrote a good article on the impact that Starbucks is having on tea sales in the UK. According to the article...
Starbucks coffee has invaded England, upsetting the tea cart in a country famous for its afternoon tea. London already has some 200 Starbucks outlets, surpassing New York City, which has 190. All told, there are 466 Starbucks in the United Kingdom, as well as many fast-growing local chains with such names as Caffe Nero and Coffee Republic. Meanwhile, U.K. tea sales have declined 12% in the past five years, according to market-research firm Mintel.
And here's an interesting cultural tidbit:
,ul>For Starbucks Corp., the British are ideal customers because about 80% of them stay in the store to drink their coffee. That gives Starbucks a chance to sell them food, says Martin Coles, president of Starbucks International. In the U.S., by contrast, 80% of the customers buy their drinks and leave.
So now Starbucks is going after China, another market known for its love of tea. Based on anecdotal feedback so far, the company is doing quite well there as well.
Jessica Vascellaro of the Wall St. Jnl. wrote an interesting article on foreign retailers who are using the Web to take a shot at cracking the US market; companies like Harrod's, FigLeaves.com, and Wedgwood have all recently launched localized US Web sites.
According to the article:
Foreign retailers see the Web as a way to expand their brand with few start-up costs and to test the waters before opening stores in the U.S. BJ Cunningham, co-founder of the British luxury-shoe company Georgina Goodman Ltd., says his company's online shopping site, launched in spring 2004, has helped the company to identify cities where it may be profitable to open a store, such as New York, Chicago and Seattle.
The globalization services and software industry has for years labored under the radar of the mainstream media. But this is gradually changing thanks in part to consolidation among top players like SDL and Lionbridge and investments by smaller players in marketing and PR.
And then there is a phenomenal success of Tom Friedman's The World Is Flat which is awakening the public to the importance of this industry in helping companies expand globally.
Language Weaver and Welocalize are doing their part in raising awareness by earning a spot on two key industry lists...
Welocalize Makes the Inc 500
Translation services vendor Welocalize announced today that it made the annual Inc. 500 ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. Welocalize ranks No. 407 on the list, with three-year sales growth of 339%. This is the first year the company made this list and I doubt it will be the last.
Language Weaver makes Deloitte Fast 500 List Language Weaver, a enterprise software developer for the automation of human language translation, has been named a Rising Star on the 2005 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America.
TransPerfect Translations announced that it was selected by the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation (NRAEF) to "produce translations of multicultural training tools."
According to the press release, the restaurant and food service industry, with more than 12 million employees, is the second-largest employer in the US. And it has a large and growing percentage of non-native English speakers.
TransPerfect says it is too early to tell what the size of this deal may be revenue-wise, but the company did confirm that they're currently only working on Spanish translation.
TransPerfect is definitely an agency to watch. Privately owned, the company has been growing quickly over the past few years and recently bought back full control of sister company Translations.com. It claims roughly 300 employess and I estimate it will finish the year at more than $60 million in revenues. While it is still a small company compared to the likes of a Lionbridge, it appears to have a high profile among the clients that I speak with and it is rapidly adapting to new opportunities as they arise. And focusing on the US Hispanic market is clearly one of those opportunities.
Starbucks "Discoveries" will initially be offered in two flavors, Seattle (latte) and Milano (espresso) and will be sold in the refrigerated section of convenience stores. According to the company, "In developing this new RTD coffee beverage, Starbucks conducted research and found that Asian consumers perceived chilled cup coffee as the highest quality of all RTD coffee beverages. Starbucks Discoveries is made fresh and is kept refrigerated, with a short, 14-day shelf life, one of the shortest on the market today. Additionally, during consumer research most Starbucks customers in Asia believed that chilled cup coffee was the best way for Starbucks to enter the market outside of their retail stores. The launch of Starbucks Discoveries represents Starbucks first entry into the chilled cup coffee segment anywhere in the world. The Company took more than a year to create a superpremium ready-to-drink coffee designed to appeal to the local taste preferences in Asia, using the same high-quality coffee found in all Starbucks retail stores and coffee-based products worldwide."
RTD coffee is big in Japan. Coke, for example, has done well with its Georgia brand of RTD, shown here:
But it looks like Starbucks is going after the high-end coffee-in-a-can market. This makes good sense because I doubt it will be able to squeeze its way into the vending machinese anytime soon and becaue Starbucks has done well by taking the high (margin) road.
John Yunker is founder of 
