Earlier this month I wrote an article in Global By Design on Google's ambitious machine translation (MT) plans. While Google is still very much in pre-beta stage with its home-brewed statistical MT (SMT) software, early indications are that Google is headed in the right direction.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology just published the results of an evaluation of more than a dozen MT solutions. The tests were designed only to look at how well the software translates from Chinese and Arabic into English. In the four tests that Google participated in, it beat the competition by a wide margin. It beat out Systran, IBM, Sakhr Software, and a number of universities.

Oddly missing from this list of competitors is Language Weaver, which also makes a SMT solution. I suspect that Language Weaver would have given Google a run for its money. Also note that this test does not imply that Google is ready to launch its software to the world just yet; I hear that their technology is not yet ready to tackly high-bandwidth, multi-user situations. But the lesson here I think is clear: Google is going to be a major player in MT in the years ahead and SMT in particular is going to be a major force.

When I heard that the latest Harry Potter book was expected to sell 10 million copies in the first day, I assumed that this number included editions in various languages. But it turns out that the book is so far only available in English...

In Germany, where the translation is not due to appear until October - a shipment of 100,000 English-language copies were immediately snapped up by bi-lingual youngsters.

So that means that right now, around the world, there are many very tired translators hard at work. Awhile back we posted two very good articles on the logistics and business of translating Harry Potter...

Translating Harry - Part I: The Language of Magic

Translating Harry — Part II: The Business of Magic

To give you an idea of just how busy these translators are right now, here's an excerpt from the Part II article:

Although a five-month period has not been unusual for the most recent, very long volumes, there is often pressure from Warner Brothers to have the translations completed much more quickly. Jean-François Ménard, the French translator, translated the 700-plus page fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in just 63 days. Torstein Hoverstad negotiated a bonus percentage with his publisher if he was able to finish the same book in a similar two-month period. (He did.) And Hanna Lutzen and Victor Morozov each formulated plans to translate the even longer Book V, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, into Danish and Ukranian, respectively, in the same eight-to-ten week timeframe.

If your company offers a multilingual Web site (or plans to offer one), I encourage you to take a moment to complete our landmark Web globalization survey. You can participate by clicking here.

In return for your valuable time, you will receive a free executive summary of the survey. You will also be entered in a drawing in wich we will give away three copies of our popular 2005 Web Globalization Report Card.

If you are a translation agency, please tell your clients, as we are also conducting a study of vendor awareness among all those who take the survey.

I spent Saturday at the Association of Language Companies conference in Pasadena and gave a talk on Web globalization. I'm glad I went. I'm seeing more and more agencies trying to grab a share of the rapidly growing Web globalization industry. My presentation was on the "Web globalization opportunity (and risk)."

Because I had so many requests for the presentation, I've posted it online here: www.bytelevel.com/global.

The key takeaways from the presentation are:

1. Web globalization is inevitable for most companies and, as a result, a huge opportunity for translation agenices.
2. Many translation agencies avoid Web globalization because they think they don't have the skills or tools. And yet many Web globalization projects are surprisingly easy to manage.
3. If you want to hone your Web globalization skills, start by globalizing your own agency Web site. Doing so sends a message to prospects that you are skilled at Web globalization. You don't have to translate your entire Web site - a "brochure" Web site in a few languages will do the trick. Be sure to include Chinese or Japanese (or both); Arabic is a hot language these days as well.
4. When selling Web globalization services, remember that your buyer may be new to translation. They may not know the difference between internationalization and localization and they may not appreciate it if you assume that they should know it. That's why I use the term Web globalization or web site globalization. People get it. When selling Web globalization services, you're going to have to invest the time to educate your clients. So many companies are just dipping their toes into these waters.
5. Just because you are already the "agency of record" for a company does not mean you'll also get the Web globalization account. It's important that you stay in touch with the marketing and Web teams so they know to include you in the RFP.
6. Along these lines, Web globalization is often the "back door" for aggressive vendors into new accounts. The danger of ignoring Web globalization opportunities is that you allow competitors to develop a relationship with your clients. And, since so much content is moving toward to the Web, you risk being marginalized down the road.
7. If you think you're too late to the Web globalization game, think again. Most companies are just getting started localizing their Web sites. Opportunities are enormous.

The term "transcreation" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it is getting used increasingly by a new wave of firms seeking to distance themselves from translation firms.

This article profiles an ad agency that is marketing transcreation as a value-added service. Here's an excerpt:

Tayrona, whose clients include Hilton Hotels and larger ad agencies working for such multinationals as furniture giant Ikea, has some 20 staffers on contract from Los Angeles, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. It's a virtual office of collaborators connected by Web cameras and keyboards, and helps reduce overhead, Osorio said.

The firm charges 24 cents per word compared with 30 cents to 40 cents per word from larger agencies, and guarantees more authentic copy.

"Many advertising agencies are charging too much for clients," he said. "They're paying too much for meeting rooms so they can watch people scratch their heads in meetings."

In defense of the translation industry, a good translator also transcreates. That's just part of the job. But savvy executives see an opportunity to offer translation-like services at a better rate. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of transcreation in the months ahead. Why? Because translation sounds like a commodity; transcreation sounds like a service.

According to this AP article, the European Union has promoted Gaelic, Ireland's native tongue, to "official" status.

This is good news for Gaelic translators, as the EU will have to churn out official documents in this language, in addition to the 20 other official EU languages. The EU translation bureau is easily the world's largest translation agency. According to the article...

Translation costs for the EU's 20 official languages had already been spiraling out of control. In January, officials said the amount was set to pass $1 billion following the entry in 2004 of 10 new EU members chiefly from Eastern Europe.

Now that's one heck of a translation bill. And this bill is only going to get bigger...

The European Union also granted semiofficial status Monday to three other regional languages: Basque, Catalan and Galician.

Residents of Galicia in northwestern Spain, Catalonia in eastern Spain and the Basque region straddling the Spanish-French border will all be able to receive EU documents in their home tongues — but only because the Spanish government agreed to pay for the costs of translation.

The standards organization OASIS recently approved Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard -- a "status that signifies the highest level of ratification."

So what exactly is DITA?

According to the press release, "DITA consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level. DITA enables organizations to deliver content as closely as possible to the point-of-use, making it ideal for applications such as integrated help systems, web sites, and how-to instruction pages. DITA's topic-oriented content can be used to exploit new features or delivery channels as they become available."

Still not clear?

I'm afraid this is one of those standards that only an information architect could love. Fortunately for me, I did have the benefit of an Idiom presentation on DITA recently. The presentation illustrated how the standard will aid in managing content across languages as well as across departments and media (Web, print, mobile).

And there is a real need among enterprises for an XML standard that allows them to "chunk" content in a way that allows for such wide-scale reuse and translation. I'll know more when I see some real-world success stories, of which there are none as of yet. But I'm sure the folks at Idiom and Arbortext are writing up their case studies as we speak.

So where will we be seeing DITA commercially?

Here are the principal vendor supporters: Idiom, Arbortext, BMC, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Oracle, and Sun. The ones to watch are not just these folks but also the folks not on the list, particularly Documentum, Interwoven, and Vignette. It will be interesting to see if other CMS vendors jump on the DITA bandwagon.

If you want to learn more, and have a few hours to spare, here are the tech specs on DITA.

According to this article China's translation market is anywhere between US$1.3bn and US$2.5bn; this is according to the Translators Association of China.

Also according to the assocation, there are 3,000 registered translation companies in China, although the article mentions that there could be more than 10,000 agencies (primarily mom and pop types) in all.

This market revenue estimate seems a bit steep to me. If we assume that the 3,000 registered firms are doing $2bn in revenues, that would mean each firm is averaging more than half a million dollars in revenues. Since most small firms in the US and Europe average less than $200,000, I'd say the $2bn number is aiming a bit too high. If we were to try to get to $2bn using all 10,000 Chinese firms, each firm would still need to generate US$180,000 -- still too high on average.

Of course, the wild card here is what percentage of revenues is driven by the Chinese government. Perhaps the government alone is contributing $500m or so to the pie; if that's the case I can see how the association is reaching this market estimate.

Any thoughts/input from you vendors out there?

PS: I almost forgot the mention the point of the article: "The State Commission for Administration of Standardization recently approved China's first set of standards on the quality of translation, effective from Sept. 1 of this year."

Last week I received a "Factory Tour" invite from Google but didn't give it much thought. I wish I had because I missed a preview of the company's ambitious machine translation (MT) efforts.

Thankfully, Philipp Lenssen includes a great recap of the Webcast at this site: Google Blogoscoped. It's worth a read.

Apparently Google is taking massive libraries of source and target text and dumping them into a database where the relationships between source and target text are analyzed and memorized. This database is then leveraged to translate new source text. Philipp explains it better than I...

This is the Rosetta Stone approach of translation. Let’s take a simple example: if a book is titled “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in English, and the German title is “Also sprach Zarathustra”, the system can begin to understand that “thus spoke” can be translated with “also sprach”. (This approach would even work for metaphors – surely, Google researchers will take the longest available phrase which has high statistical matches across different works.) All it needs is someone to feed the system the two books and to teach it the two are translations from language A to language B, and the translator can create what Franz Och called a “language model.” I suspect it’s crucial that the body of text is immensely large, or else the system in its task of translating would stumble upon too many unlearned phrases. Google used the United Nations Documents to train their machine, and all in fed 200 billion words. This is brute force AI, if you want – it works on statistical learning theory only and has not much real “understanding” of anything but patterns.

This sure is brute force MT. I'll be very interested to know just how long a string a text Google can effectively translate. More important, how will Google handle the flood of brand names, oddball terms, and local slang?

But let's just assume that Google does make this ambitious project a success; how will this affect the translation industry in general and Web globalization in particular?

Assuming this all does work moderately well, companies will be incented to pull all text out of graphics to make the most of this free translation service. After all, if Google is providing users in Vietnam a free translation of your company's Web site, why not do what you can to make everything translatable.

This would also be yet another blow to Macromedia Flash, not that the emergence of AJAX isn't doing enough damage.

But what about the impact on translation vendors? i don't think they have much to worry about, yet. The need for high-quality, human-edited translation isn't going away anytime soon. Long term, however, all bets are off. Google should be on every translation vendor's radar; this company has lots of money, lots of smarts, and lots of incentive to provide the world's text in all the world's languages.

Perhaps I expected too much. I loved The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and when I heard the title of Tom Friedman’s new book back in the fall, I got my hopes up. Just by the title, I knew what he was getting at, and I was thrilled to see such a high-profile columnist calling attention once again to this phenomenon that is globalization.

But now, having read The World is Flat, I’m a little disappointed. And yet I will recommend the book (three stars on Amazon) because I agree with his message, and I think it’s critically important that we have writers like Tom out there explaining the many ways that globalization makes the world a better place to live.

However, the book could have been much better with some ruthless editing. As a reader, I don’t like being talked down to, and I feel that Tom does that a bit too much, primarily by repeating many of the same concepts and buzzwords over and over again. For example, he explains why the world is flat early on. It’s a good metaphor, but Tom proceeds to attach "flat" to everything he sees. He sees customer service reps in India "flattening" their accents. He writes of the "coefficient of flatness" and "compassionate flatism." I felt as if Tom tried way too hard to make his flat metaphor stick. And maybe it will stick.

Here are a few nuggets from the book that did stick with me:

• "In the future globalization is going to be increasingly driven by the individuals who understand the flat world, adapt themselves quickly to the processes and technologies."
  This is such a key point. The interesting thing about globalization is that it empowers individuals, even more than countries.

• Tom stresses that globalization helps the small firms as much as the big firms, perhaps even more. As the owner of a small firm, I agree. Tom quotes UPS CEO Mike Eskew: "You know who the majority of our customers and partners are? Small businesses. They are asking us to take them global. We help these companies achieve parity with the bigger guys."

• Tom talks about Eriksen Translations, a New York-based translation firm featured in my firm's Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation Agencies. Tom mentions how Eriksen embraced Skype, the VoIP service that is revolutionizing the telecoms industry. After the first six months of using Skype, the company cut phone costs by 10%. I only wish Tom had talked a bit more about translation agencies – these firms have been outsourcing work for decades and have always been early adopters of new technologies, from email to VoIP.

• "The Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top." The Lenovo/IBM deal is one example. And just wait until Chinese automakers start making their way into the US…

• "China has more than 160 cities with a population of one million or more."
  Wow.

While I didn’t love this book, I liked it. If you’ve been reading The Economist for the past few years then much of this book will come across as old news. But if not, it’s worth a read. Tom is truly passionate about all that is good about globalization, and it comes through in his writing. The world needs more voices like his to prevent the US (and other nations) from knee-jerk protectionism as we collectively slouch toward a more connected world.

This article in the New York Times about the lack of language support in four New York City hospitals is as sad as it is maddening:

When a Spanish-speaking hospital receptionist refused to interpret during her lunch hour, doctors at St. Vincent's Staten Island Hospital turned to a 7-year-old child to tell their patient, an injured construction worker, that he needed an emergency amputation.

With no one to bridge the language gap for another patient, a newly pregnant immigrant from Mexico with life-threatening complications, doctors pressed her to sign a consent form in English for emergency surgery. Understanding that the surgery was needed "to save the baby," the young married woman awoke to learn that the operation had instead left her childless and sterile.

There are more than 150 languages spoken in the New York metro area but the article states that nearly all the problems cited in the legal complaint filed against the hospitals concern Spanish and Korea. I should think that these hospitals could have easily found local interpreters had they applied themselves.

But let's just assume that the hospitals truly were short-staffed and there wasn't an interpreter to be found...

Haven't these hospitals heard about Language Line?
Language Line is a phone-based, on-demand interpreting services. You simply pick up the phone, tell them what language you need support for (they support them all) and you get connected to an interpreter within seconds. You put the patient on another line and you can conduct your conversation relatively smoothly. Granted, if the patient is in bed at the time, the phone solution is far from ideal, but it can't be any worse than asking a seven-year-old to interpret.

I recently spoke with Language Line. They do a huge deal of work for hospitals and they even insure the quality of the work of their interpreters. I had assumed that most hospitals were aware of this service, or similar services. Perhaps the NYC hospitals were aware and did not want to pay (it can cost up to $2.50 per minute). Who knows. All I do know is that there is no reason for patients not to get the information they need in a language they can understand.

Yes, I know there are plenty of folks out there who will tell me that "this is America and people should speak English in America." I'm well aware. But let's assume an American is traveling to Russia on vacation and an accident ensues and the local hospital does not provide translation because "you're in Russia now and you need to speak Russian." I just think hospitals need to serve their patients, period, and that includes speaking to them in a language they can understand.

In a page borrowed from Apple's playbook, globalization services/software vendor SDL is asking prospects to switch over to SDLX.

What is SDLX? It's a computer-aided translation (CAT) software tool used by translators and agencies to more efficiently and more quickly manage translation. The leader in this space by a long margin is TRADOS.

And, as I written previously, it's not easy to get companies and translation agencies to switch their CAT tools, particularly away from the market leader. That's why I like SDL's new Web-based campaign so much. It poses and answers the types of questions that prospects will naturally ask, like:

- Why switch?
- What companies have swtiched?
- How hard is it to switch?

My only question is will this campaign work as well for SDL as it did for Apple?

eBay has launched of an international classified ads Web site called Kijiji, which the company says means "village" in Swahili.

Kijiji is available for 50 cities in Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Oddly, Kijiji doesn't support any cities in which Swahili is widely spoken; perhaps those Web sites are on the way.

My first thought when visiting the Web site was that eBay is trying to beat Craigslist to the world. I realize that eBay owns a piece of Craigslist, but not a majority interest. Meanwhile, Craigslist has been steadily launching sites for a number of international cities, from Bangkok to Montreal. However, Craigslist has to this point only launched English-language Web sites, which renders many of these international sites largely useless to the majority of the population. I'm also told that the categories have not been localized either, rendering them not only useless but downright silly.

eBay has the language skills in place to do international classified ads and it will be interesting to see if the Web sites generate the type of enthusiastic traffic that Craigslist has achieved.

Kijiji also creates an interesting dynamic in some markets. Consider Montreal. If you speak English, you have Craigslist; if you speak French, you have Kijiji.

One final thought: With Kijiji, eBay has officially re-entered Japan. eBay gave up on Japan a few years back, ceding the market to Yahoo! I'm glad to see eBay taking another crack at the market; it is simply too big to ignore.

PS: My company is close to publishing an in-depth analysis of eBay's globalization efforts; contact me if you'd like more information.

Update: Here is a Reuters article on the launch.

I'm at the IA Summit in Montreal and have been pleased to find that IA (information architecture) professionals are tackling the challenges of content globalization in a big way. And this is a great thing, because the IA industry is critical to the evolution of truly successful global Web sites.

I'm not much of an IA guy, so I've been getting up to speed on industry buzzwords like facets and taxonomies and folksonomies. And the presentations by far have been terrific.

There were a total of four sessions that spoke directly to content globalization, touching on everything from translation testing to global IA (I gave a talk on one of my favorite topics, the global gateway). And there were a good number of attendees across these sessions -- mostly internal IA professionals and their agency counterparts. I did not find one localization industry professional (besides myself), but I expect that to change in the years ahead.

Thanks to the efforts of Louis Rosefeld, Peter Van Dijck, Jorge Arango, Livia Labate, and many others, I expect we'll see some really exciting things coming out of the IA industry, which will have a large impact on the localization industry. My personal goal will be to do what I can to get the localization industry and the IA industry to work more closely together to share insights and do a better job of advancing global Web sites, from taxonomy to translation.

PS: I spoke with more than a dozen IAs who are all working on brand new multilingual Web projects (from IT to services to apparel), another strong sign that companies have awakened to the importance of Web globalization. I said it before and I'll say it again: 2005 is the year that Web globalization goes mainstream.

Newsweek International has published an article on the rise of English around the world. English instruction is a billion-dollar business and growing. But what's most fascinating is that non-native English speakers now outnumber native English speakers. Check out these article excerpts:

Within a decade, 2 billion people will be studying English and about half the world—some 3 billion people—will speak it, according to a recent report from the British Council.

Non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers 3 to 1, according to English-language expert David Crystal, whose numerous books include "English as a Global Language." "There's never before been a language that's been spoken by more people as a second than a first," he says. In Asia alone, the number of English-users has topped 350 million—roughly the combined populations of the United States, Britain and Canada. There are more Chinese children studying English—about 100 million—than there are Britons.

Does this mean that companies don't need to translate their Web sites?

Not exactly.

Every study I have read about the purchasing habits of non-native English speakers says that people prefer to purchase goods in their native language. That doesn't mean they won't purchase in another language, just that they're more likely to purchase in their native language. Which is why we're witnessing a rush of US companies creating Spanish-language Web sites for the US market.

The article also notes the fascinating rise of hybrid languages such as Spanglish (Spanish/English) Englog (Tagalog/ English), and Japlish (Japanese/English). Non-native English speakers are making English their own, melding the languages together in ways that is bound to keep grammarians pulling out their hair for generations to come.

The US Department of Defense is launching local "news" sites in an effort to counter what it believes is "misinformation" about the United States in the foreign media.

One Web site is aimed at the Balkans and the other, shown below, at the Maghreb region of northwest Africa, which includes Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Magharebia supports English, French and Arabic languages.

Magharebia in Arabic

Magharebia in English

Magharebia also promises daily newsletters in each language

Magharebia represents a signficant investment of time and taxpayer dollars, requiring 50 freelance writers and additional translators. I must admit that the site does do a good job of providing seamless navigation between languages. What the site fails at doing is making it clear exactly who or what is behind the Web site. The only way a visitor will find out the Department of Defense is behind this project is if he or she clicks on the "disclaimer" link; this is hardly the way one goes about building trust around the world.

What I'd also like to know is what a Web site that reports soccer scores in Tunisia has to do with placing the US in a more positive light. Do the powers at be at the Pentagon truly believe that the best way to get your message out to the world is to dress it up in localized faux news portals?

Speaking of faux news portals, here is the Balkan Times "news" site:

Naturally, many in Washington are questioning the wisdom of this initiative.
According to this CNN article many are wondering if these Web sites violate President Bush's recent mandate against sponsoring journalism.

Web globalization, when used wisely, is a wonderful way to educate the world and expand your business around the world. But Web globalization can just as easily be used unwisely, and this is one vivid example.

Afrikaans> Een plesierige kersfees

Arabic> I'D MIILAD SAID OUA SANA SAIDA

Armenian> Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Pari Gaghand

Azeri> Tezze Iliniz Yahsi Olsun

Basque> Zorionak eta Urte Berri On!

Bohemian> Vesele Vanoce

Brazilian> Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo

Breton> Nedeleg laouen na bloavezh mat

Bulgarian> Tchestita Koleda; Tchestito Rojdestvo Hristovo

Chinese-Mandarin> Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan

Chinese-Cantonese> Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun

Cornish> Nadelik looan na looan blethen noweth

Cree> Mitho Makosi Kesikansi

Croatian> Sretan Bozic

Czech> Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce stastny Novy Rok

Danish> Gledelig Jul

Dutch> Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!

English> Merry Christmas

Esperanto> Gajan Kristnaskon

Estonian> Ruumsaid juulup|hi

Farsi> Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad

Finnish> Hyva a joulua

Flemish> Beste wensen voor een Prettig Kerstfeest

French> Joyeux Noël

risian> Noflike Krystdagen en in protte Lok en Seine yn it Nije Jier!

German> Fröhliche Weihnachten

Greek> Kala Christouyenna!

Hawaiian> Mele Kalikimaka

Hebrew> Mo'adim Lesimkha. Chena tova

Hindi> Shub Naya Baras

Hungarian> Kellemes Karacsonyi unnepeket

Icelandic> Gledileg Jol

Indonesian> Selamat Hari Natal

Iraqi> Idah Saidan Wa Sanah Jadidah

Irish> Nollaig Shona Dhuit

Italian> Buone Feste Natalizie

Japanese> Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto

Korean> Sung Tan Chuk Ha

Latvian> Prieci'gus Ziemsve'tkus un Laimi'gu Jauno Gadu!

Lithuanian> Linksmu Kaledu

Manx> Nollick ghennal as blein vie noa

Maori> Meri Kirihimete

Marathi> Shub Naya Varsh

Navajo> Merry Keshmish

Norwegian> God jul og godt nytt år!

Pennsylvania German> Frehlicher Grischtdaag un en hallich Nei Yaahr!

Polish> Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia

Portuguese> Boas Festas

Rapa-Nui> Mata-Ki-Te-Rangi. Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua

Rumanian> Sarbatori vesele

Russian> Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom

Serbian> Hristos se rodi

Slovakian> Sretan Bozic or Vesele vianoce

Sami> Buorrit Juovllat

Samoan> La Maunia Le Kilisimasi Ma Le Tausaga Fou

Scots (Gaelic)> Nollaig chridheil huibh

Serb-Croatian> Sretam Bozic. Vesela Nova Godina

Singhalese> Subha nath thalak Vewa. Subha Aluth Awrudhak Vewa

Slovak> Vesele Vianoce. A stastlivy Novy Rok

Slovene> Vesele Bozicne. Screcno Novo Leto

Spanish> Feliz Navidad

Swedish> God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt

Tagalog> Maligayamg Pasko. Masaganang Bagong Taon

Tamil> Nathar Puthu Varuda Valthukkal

Thai> Sawadee Pee Mai

Turkish> Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun

Ukrainian> Srozhdestvom Kristovym

Urdu> Naya Saal Mubarak Ho

Vietnamese> Chung Mung Giang Sinh

Welsh> Nadolig Llawen

Yugoslavian> Cestitamo Bozic Papua

New Guinea> Bikpela hamamas blong dispela Krismas na Nupela yia igo long

yu.

As the end of 2004 draws near, I feel compelled to toss in a few predictions for the year ahead...

Web Globalization Goes Mainstream
Based on surveys I’ve conducted, discussions with executives at Fortune 500 companies, and a few recent discussions with reporters, the signs are pointing toward a very public year for the field of Web globalization. You may remember that Web globalization was a hot topic back in the heady days of 2000. But this time around, growth will be driven by real revenues. Amazon could see more than half of its revenues come from outside the US by the end of 2005, and definitely by 2006. And it won’t just be the virtual companies that embrace Web globalization; we’ll see companies from industries such as hospitality, retail and financial services launch multilingual Web sites – another sign that this emerging field has crossed over from luxury to necessity.

Amazon Adds Spanish
The CFO of Amazon said recently that the globalization of Amazon.com is a “significant opportunity” and promised additional local Web sites. The question is: What new Web sites and when? The company did acquire a Chinese bookseller, Joyo.com, over the summer, but has largely been quiet otherwise. Many people don’t know that Amazon already sells around the world – shipping goods from its many local stores to more than 200 countries; the more languages Amazon supports, the greater sales it will do. Next year, I expect Amazon to begin supporting Spanish for the US market. They simply cannot afford to ignore the 30+ million native speakers of Spanish; furthermore, the language gives the retailer a platform on which to expand into Latin America. I also will not be surprised to see Amazon enter the Korean market, although I suspect they are predisposed to a local acquisition. Amazon spent enormously to get the Japanese Web site off the ground, and it is treading much more cautiously these days. But Spanish for the US market is one area the company can get off the ground relatively cheaply and see immediate results.

Apple Launches iTunes Korea
We’ve been told that Apple will be launching iTunes Japan in March 2005, but Apple has been silent about the rest of Asia. Korea is a natural next step and will be particularly important should Apple release the much-rumored iPhone handset. This all is a run-up to the ultimate launch of iTunes China, which will be led not by the iPod but by the iPhone.

The Global Gateway Finds the “Sweet Spot”
Six years ago I coined the term “global gateway” to refer to the pull-down menus that companies were just beginning to use to direct Web users to their specific languages or countries. Over the years, the global gateway has evolved dramatically, although until recently most companies still largely overlooked its importance in driving traffic to localized Web sites. But based on conversations I’ve had over the past few months with a wide range of companies, I believe 2005 will see the global gateway become a priority on a larger number of Web sites. The “sweet spot” for a global gateway is the very top of the Web page, usually to the right side. We’re going to see more and more Web sites “promote” their global gateways to this location; this is a positive development for companies and Web users alike.

Cool News reports on some fairly sophisticated movie localization at Disney. The studio recently dubbed its hit movie The Incredibles for Argentina using well-known local personalities.

This extra Argentine effort was a first for Disney, which "began dubbing specific versions of its films for Mexico, its fifth largest market," only two years ago. The studio also began dubbing "two additional versions in 'neutral' Spanish, one for Central America -- including Colombia, Venezuela and Peru -- and another for the Southern Cone countries of Argentina, Uruaguay, Paraguay and Chile."

Note that a "neutral" Spanish is not without its risks. Many a marketer is lured by the prospect of a "one size fits all" language because they stretch their translation/dubbing budgets. What translators do in these cases is attempt to remove any truly local phrases, slang and so on. The danger of a neutral language is that it can end up sounding generic, which might work just fine for an instruction manual but not so with a film. Sometimes less neutral is more interesting.

The iTunes Canada store is now up and running. That makes it a total of 14 local iTunes stores now available. Here is a screen shot of the iTunes global gateway:

To give you an idea of how quickly Apple has been expanding globally, here is a screen shot of the iTunes global gateway back in September:

Yep, just four stores were live in September. Talk about rapid globalization.

A Japan iTunes store is in the works, but that country won't be as simple as Canada. Character set challenges are never easy, particularly when it comes to text input, output and search engines. Nevertheless, Apple is going at a blistering pace and I won't be surprised if I see 30 stores by the end of 2005.

All Web sites are, by default, global. But which Web sites do the best job of truly speaking to the world? That is, which Web sites support the most languages, make navigation effortless for non-English speakers, and provide Web users around the world with fast-loading Web pages?

These are the questions I began asking a few years ago when my firm produced the first report on this topic, The Web Globalization Report Card. We studied 121 Web sites, ranging from Amazon to GE to Sony.

Google emerged as the best site overall.

Yesterday we published the 2005 Web Globalization Report Card and, sure enough, Google is tops once again. Frankly, I wasn't surprised to see Google at the top of the list. It's not a perfect Web site, but it does a great many things right -- from providing users around the world with a fast-loading Web page (much faster than Yahoo!) to using a consistent, global interface to supporting 97 different languages. As I've said before, Google is arguably the most global commercial Web site yet developed.

But it is not the only successful global Web site out there. Here are the top 10 Web sites:

1. Google
2. HP
3. American Express
4. Philips
5. Skype
6. Ericsson
7. Procter & Gamble
8. Cisco Systems
9. IBM
10. E*TRADE

Companies like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Qualcomm and Disney did not fair so well. All finished near the bottom of our rankings. Being a global company or having a global brand does not ensure a successful global Web site.

If your company is planning to dive into the Web globalization waters, I encourage you to take the time to review these 10 Web sites.

For Microsoft's video game Halo 2 to become a global success story, the game needed to be localized for the world.

Easier said that done.

JBL Localization issued a press release announcing their role in creating a Latin American Spanish version of Halo 2. The release sheds light on just how complex video game localization can be. Here's an excerpt:

According to JBI Localization President Eliane Barth, the Halo 2 project involved more than 80,000 words of script, including a promotional trailer, and the recording of more than 30 actors reading the lines of the various characters. In one instance, Barth said, a last minute script change required that 14 actors be rounded up for a next-day recording session. The actors arrived at the studio on schedule and the work was completed that day. Altogether, JBI delivered more than 16,000 audio files, including processing.

A lot of people look at video game localization the same way they look at Web localization -- like photocopying. Yet this analogy is dangerous, because it implies that computers can do the heavy lifting and that the process itself requires little time or skill. But, as JBL illustrates, localizing a video game requires many of the same skills that went into the creating the original video game.

Here's another excerpt:

Specifications for the project were extremely rigid, Barth said. For example, audio loop lengths were required to be within five percent of their lengths in the English language version.

What JBL had to do is return translated audio "loops" that were nearly the same length as the English-language loops. Anyone who has learned another language or watched a subtitled movie knows full well that translations rarely align, word for word, with the source language. So, to ensure that the loops stayed aligned, JBL had to both translate for time length as well as manage the audio talent to make sure they spoke more quickly or more slowly to "hit their marks."

For more information on this emerging field of video game localization, check out this Q&A I conducted recently.

According to this article, Quebec Premier Jean Charest has hinted that he might crack down on the spread of English in the workplace. Apparently French is losing its grip. albeit very slowly, in this Canadian Province.

The report I just completed on Web globalization would seem to support this trend. In 2003, we looked at language use on the Web sites of 121 major multinationals. French Canadian finished 7th overall. In our latest report, we studied 200 Web sites and French Canadian finished 12th overall. Of course, behind this drop were up-and-coming languages like Chinese and Korean.

Still, you have to wonder about the future of a language when the government requires people to speak it.

Conversely, there are groups within the US who want to force federal and state governments not to support Spanish.

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, Babel Fish.

Click here to search on "Web globalization" in English and Chinese.

This could be a handy tool for testing Google adwords in other markets. Apart from that, I'm not sure how I'd use it just yet, at least not until I improve on my Spanish.

I can't imagine Google will look too kindly at its design:

You can find a Web site devoted to pretty much anything on the Internet. The Web site Enrgish.com is devoted to " humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design."

Apparently the site is so popular that it has spawned a book deal. According to Publisher's Marketplace, Steve Caires (the Web site creator) has signed a book deal, tentatively titled "DO YOU FEEL ENJOY!!: TODAY'S MODERN ENGRIS."

This should be a lesson to all translators - make a mistake and you could find yourself enshrined in a book someday.