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« Sarah Palin's media coach is for the birds... | Main | Twitter Means Business - A New Book on How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company » Web sites should be multilingual for business scalability, not just Web site usabilityPosted by Bob Brin on December 1, 2008 at December 1, 2008 9:27 AM Having a global presence really means thinking (and speaking) locally. This causes me to add a fourth D to our 3D Web planning process. So now, we must consider dialect in addition to the desired action of our audiences, differentiation and dialog (ways to engage them in a conversation). Dialect is critical even for domestic organizations because most need to communicate to multilingual customer and employee audiences.
But for large organizations, dialect is not only an audience-targeting or usability issue, it quickly becomes a problem (or opportunity) of scale. Many have multiple Web sites, in multiple languages and with thousands of pages. Managing content is one thing. Managing translations of thousands or millions of pages is a really big thing. Thus there are companies like Sajan with translation management systems and an international army of linguists. The technology makes sure you get the best use out of the linguists' hard work, by providing a database of translations and tools so that you don't have to reinvent the sentence every time you translate. This drives cost out of the system and, perhaps more importantly, allows organizations to enter new markets and roll out products faster. Globalization is really about localization. The company that can get local faster, and in the dialect that their audience understands, will sell more.
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