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.
I want to mention two Web globalization conferences that I'll be speaking at in the first half of 2006. If your company is investing in Web globalization (and if it isn't it probably should be) these events are worth a look...
According to Paid Content, Yahoo! has launched: Yahoo7, which is a joint venture between the Seven Network (TV) and Yahoo Australia and New Zealand, to take on Australia's popular portal ninemsn (another TV/Web partnership).
Yahoo7 will replace Yahoo's Australia/New Zealand portal. Yahoo7 is clearly aimed at Australia -- and uses the .au domain -- but Yahoo! still refers to it as a pan-Oz/New Zealand portal, as shown here in this excerpt from Yahoo's global gateway.
I find it interesting that Yahoo! groups two countries that often view themselves as rivals (particularly in sports) into one portal. It would be similar to grouping the US and Canada together. Sure, there are similarities, but there are just as many differences.
UPS just reported a very strong quarter. While US volume grew 6.2%, "internationally, average daily package volume rose 25.1% to 1.8 million a day. Export volume was again strong with a 15.4% increase reflecting significant gains across all regions of the world."
And because UPS earns higher profit margins on international shipments, its future is looking very healthy. And what about FedEx? Although I haven't checked their latest numbers, I think it's safe to assume that this rising tide that is globalization will lift both boats.
Latvia has "localized" the spelling of the euro to better fit its national language. Says this article...
"The 'eu' diphthong is alien to the Latvian language. We don't have such a sound, so we will use 'eiro'," Education Minister Ina Druviete, a trained linguist, told a cabinet meeting at which ministers unanimously opted for the "ei" word over the "eu" one.
And that's not all; apparently Latvia is not alone. Malta will spell it "ewro" and Greeks spell it "EYPO" -- when will the madness end?
I don't see what the big deal is with these changes. I don't speak Latvian but I think I could figure out what eiro stands for. Even for those who don't, surely the little euro symbol will allevitate any doubts.
I think its human nature to modify and mutate names to make them your own. And, once you do localize something to fit your needs, you truly make it your own, which is a positive sign for the long-term survival of the euro, or eiro, or ewro.
Amazon gave out some highlights from 2005 Xmas season and it looks like they had a very good quarter. What jumped out at me was that they shipped products to more than 200 countries.
I also came across this release in which Joyo.com (Amazon China) will be testing a lower threshold for free shipping; it will now be roughly US$13 to quality - a 50% decrease, and much more realistic amount.
I just got word from ForeignExchange Translations president Andres Heuberger that his company plans to add 27 positions this year -- which is an impressive 50% growth rate.
I used to work for ForeignExchange back in the early days and I want to point out two things this company has done extremely well at: focusing on a specific industry and adding value beyond translations.
The company focuses on the life sciences industry and has made quality control one of its chief selling points. Quality is a life or death matter to medical device and pharmaceutical companies and they will pay a premium for agencies that can demonstrate not just high-quality work but industry and terminology expertise. ForeignExchange is not the only agency to focus on this industry, but it is one of the best at marketing itself as such.
Second, ForeignExchange hosts regular paid Webinars featuring industry experts. These Webinars cover a variety of topics across the industry, not just translations. And these are not just sales seminars dressed up as educational seminars. How many other translation vendors serving the life sciences industry have hosted a seminar titled The Revised MDD: Practical Implications for Device Manufacturers? Nobody, would be my guess. And by partnering with other life sciences companies, such as Quintiles and Pleiad Devices, to develop these seminars, ForeignExchange develops a healthy lead-generation pipeline.
As the translations industry expands, translation agencies will thrive by focusing on specific industries and developing highly specialized services within these industries.
And now here are some immediate job openings at ForeignExchange:
1. Strategic Account Manager (Boston)
Support multinational life science clients: strategy, proposal writing, solutions development
2. Business Development Manager (Denver or Madrid)
Sell our specialized language services to pharma, device firms in the Rockies and on the West Coast
3. Analysis Manager (Boston or Denver)
Bridge sales, operations to scope work and formulate ideal service-delivery approaches
4. Document Localization Lead (Boston or Denver)
Coordinate multilingual DTP projects and provide TRADOS expertise
More information on all of these positions is available at http://www.fxtrans.com/careers.
China has been making a lot of noise lately about wanting "root" control over the Internet. That's clearly not going to happen anytime soon, nor should it happen. But what if China simply decided one day to create a "Chinese Internet" as an alternative to the pesky Internet that it can't control?
This is what naming expert Naseem Javed suggets might happen in this essay. Here's an excerpt:
For now, English is the big mama of the business language on the global scene, but on the spoken side, Chinese is the big papa. In a few years, as every second person in China gets a business portal, they will become dominating e-commerce players dwarfing the West. China would need its own independent control of how it will play the access game, decide on local languages, suffixes and come up with its own registration and trademark dispute policies rather than wait for annual memos from ICANN.
I have a hard time believing that China would try to create its own version of the Internet. It certainly has the power to create some sort of cultural/geographic intranet but I can't see it replacing the Internet that more than 100 million Chinese already use daily. Besides, China is doing a pretty good job of filtering/monitoring/censoring the Internet as it is.
But Naseem does raise a very important point -- for Chinese speakers, the Internet is far from user-friendly. The major obstacle is the URL, which is still limited to ASCII (Latin) characters. The folks at ICANN and IETF are working to upgrade the DNS to Unicode, but this will take time. There is a workaround in use that allows Web users to input Chinese characters as a URL which is then transformed into ASCII characters behind the scenes (known as "Punycode") but I'm not sure how widely used this system currently is.
Until the Internet is truly global, that is, until it fully supports Unicode, I suspect we'll have many more countries and Web users unhappy with its usability. That's understandable.
Will these countries set out to create a parallel Internet universe? I doubt it. But, then again, China is now out to create its own technological version of a 3G cellular network, so anything is possible...
John Yunker is founder of 
