Intercultural & Cross Cultural News

Why Language Matters on Global Websites

A European Parliament draft report notes that only 6% of consumers buy from websites outside their home countries. One-third who tried to buy had their business refused by the retailer. The report concludes that "in the light of the lack of confidence of European consumers in the digital environment and the many factors that limit cross-border e-commerce, it is regrettable that the E.U. currently has no strategy of its own that would help resolve the situation." According to press coverage, members of the European Parliament (MEP) want to make it easier for European consumers to buy from websites in other member countries. They're advocating a trust mark to increase consumer confidence and a charter of consumer rights.

Country-and-language-specific websites

Organizations are finding that the use of multiple languages and translations can be a competitive differentiator, particularly with websites designed for online transactions such as shopping, finance, or travel. A number of trailblazing companies have created multiple country-and-language-specific websites, and leveraged them to provide a consistent brand image across all markets. They sell products and services globally but market them locally. In the online world where the customer cannot physically touch the product and is rarely able to speak one-on-one with a salesperson, the words and images on the web site that describe the product or service are important to the sales process.

gCommerce Solutions Launches Website Translation Service

In anticipation of record international business over the next calendar year, gCommerce Solutions, a unique eMarketing firm specializing in the hospitality industry, today unveiled a website translation and search optimization service designed to increase international bookings at U.S. hotels. The service is expected to help hotels capture a record number of international travelers expected to flood the U.S.

Time for multilingual net domains

Imagine if each time a British internet user entered an e-mail or website address, they would be required to include a Chinese or Cyrillic character.

For millions of non-English speakers around the world, this is precisely what they experience when they use the internet as the domain name system is unable to fully accommodate their local language.

Multilingual website targets foreign tourist market

A new $2.7 million travel website has been launched today in Brisbane to promote international tourism to Australia.

The Australia.com website uses the 'where the bloody hell are you' tag line and is available in seven languages. Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey says more than half of all international tourists to Australia last year used the Internet for research. "It's using the latest technology to drive Australia further into all those major markets where we want to increase those international visitors coming here," she said.

Google Leaps Over Language Barriers

"Here at Google, part of our mission is to make the world’s information universally accessible to our users, regardless of differences such as language. Today we are releasing a tool from Google Translate that takes us one step closer to this goal. We are happy to announce the arrival of a new cross-language search feature that allows users across the world to find and view search results on foreign language web pages in their own native language. Now, more content on the web is accessible to more users, regardless of what languages they speak. This means, for example, that if an Arabic speaker is searching for restaurants in New York, he/she can now conduct a search in Arabic, and Google will translate the results (most of which are from English language websites) and provide the most relevant search results in their native language."

Google launches translation feature

Google launched a new feature Wednesday that translates search requests and results in 12 languages automatically.

Mountain View-based Google lets users now enter search requests in their language, and then click on a link to have the resulting Web pages translated. Google said it expects the service to be used extensively outside the United States and the United Kingdom. Non-English languages currently available are Arabic, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese.

UEFA launches Chinese language website

UEFA on Tuesday launched a Chinese version of its website to addresses the growing demand and popularity of football in China.

Together with English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and Korean, Chinese Mandarin is the tenth language available on uefa.com.

Google prepares for multilingual searches

Google is preparing a future update of its search engine that lets users search content in any language.

The cross-language information retrieval technology uses software to translate queries into English. It then performs the search and translates the results back to the original language. Arabic speakers, for instance, will be able to look for reviews on New York restaurants, even if such information is not natively available in that language.

How Google translates without understanding

Here's a fascinating essay/interview about language translation this morning from Bill Softky, chief algorithmist at an Internet advertising startup. The interview is with Google's Franz Och. Among the questions addressed:

How did Google manage to beat mighty IBM in this language-translation contest conducted by NIST?
How does Google manage such a feat when its engineers neither speak nor understand the languages being translated?
Why is Google's best still not good enough? ... Or is it?

RTO Industry missing out on Hispanic custom

Considering that there are 45 million Hispanics in the United States representing nearly 9% of all consumer spending, the Rent to Own industry is doing a poor job of marketing to this group in the virtual world. Less than 1% of RTO industry websites offer a Spanish translation. Rent-A-Center is the only rent to own company with a national presence, or even a large regional presence, to offer a complete Spanish translation.

UN Website More To Be Thoroughly Multilingual

Delegates attending the United Nations Committee on Information meeting in New York today called for new measures to make the world body’s website more thoroughly multilingual.

Simon Pidoux of Switzerland said the UN Department for Public Information (DPI) should “continue its efforts to attain linguistic parity of the content of this Internet site in the different official languages of the United Nations.�?

Dell launches Spanish-language corporate blog

Dell chairman and CEO Michael Dell announced Tuesday at the Entrepreneur Endeavor Summit that the company has launched DellenDirecto.com, a Spanish-language blog geared toward communicating with its customer base and other stakeholders. Dell considers it to be an extension of Direct2Dell, its English-language corporate blog that it has operated since July 2006. In March, Dell launched a Chinese version of Direct2Dell.

Google Releases Multilingual Desktop

Just in time for spring, Google has released the newest version of Desktop in full multilingual bloom. In March, the company had released the English version of Desktop 5 Beta, and now has added 29 languages. The language support includes French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and, for the first time, Hindi. The new version of Google Desktop, an application for Windows Vista, XP, or 2000, can search a user's local hard drive or the Web from a single toolbar.

MySpace Launches Spanish Language Site

MySpace, the world’s leading lifestyle portal, announced today at the Billboard Latin American Music Conference the beta launch of MySpace en Español, a new Spanish-language version for U.S. based Hispanics. MySpace also revealed today a new pan-regional site in Spanish for Latin American residents as well as further development plans for localized communities in Mexico and Brazil.

Ambitious project to count (and map) all Internet Users

An ambitious project called MapMyName, launched by two graduate students from Aveiro University in Portugal, aims to map and subsequently count all the Internet users in the world.

This is made possible, according to a video release in YouTube, due to a “recommendations system�?. Every person who signs in, recommends 3 friends that also use the Internet.

Multilingual.com release new guide to Internationalization

Multilingual.com have just posted their new publication, "Internationalization". The guide is a must read for anyone interested in multilingual website design or localization.

Globalization and New Opportunities for Foreign Language Technology

Privately owned GlobaLinguist, Inc. will be featured in an exclusive Market News First interview Friday, April 20, 2007 at 11:45 a.m. CDT. Company Founder and CTO Daniel Blumenthal will join "Microcap Engine" host Steve Kanaval to discuss the business and works of the Web-based language-learning engine on www.mn1.com.

GlobaLinguist is an industry leader, offering language technology solutions to schools, businesses, governments and individuals. WordChamp.com is the Company's flagship product, an innovative website with users across 195 countries speaking 125 languages.

Gel-Pak launches Chinese-Language website

Gel-Pak, a division of Delphon Industries and leading manufacturer of device shipping and handling carriers used predominantly by the semiconductor, optoelectronics, and telecommunication industries announced the launch of its new Chinese-Language website today.

The site was developed in order to more effectively compete in the fast growing Chinese semiconductor and photonics markets.

Google gets slap for using Chinese rival's Translation data

Google Inc. (GOOG) apologized Monday to a Chinese rival that complained its data were used by the U.S. search giant in a new Internet tool in an incident that highlighted the intense competition in China's booming online market.

Sohu.com Inc. complained Sunday that Google's tool for inputting Chinese characters appeared to copy material from Sohu's Sogou search engine. Chinese Web surfers pointed out similarities shortly after the release of the Google tool.