Since the early 80’s the effects of globalization have affected most countries. By this I mean anywhere you go you will see a McDonalds, a burger King or even buy a Coke or a Pepsi at your local store. Everyone around the world knows what these products are. More and more of today’s businesses are going global as in the case of the portable computer or cellular phones. But the problem these companies are still facing, along with all the midsize and smaller industries that are going global as well, is the ability to use one marketing technique to reach all of these people, and even the internet is not doing a complete job (although it is the most viable medium to attain this goal).
Everybody knows that websites can be viewed by anyone anywhere in the world, and yet most companies that create their website do so for their local market only. Even companies that are considered to be international have country specific offices that maintain that countries web site. They still do not have one website with a multi language format.
It is now known that there are currently over 800 million users online, 200 million of those are english speakers, another 270 million are Asian language speakers and the other close to 200 million are speakers of other European languages. Marketing companies have long said that it is essential for global companies to grow in the languages of Chinese and Japanese.
Why is it so important? Well, 70% of the worlds economics comes from non english countries and when asked most of those people would use the web more if the content were in their own language.
The cost of a multilingual site would be offset by the increase in revenue sales would bring. After all, going global will attract more people to you, and the internet is the most cost effective way of reaching people.
Although having a multilingual website is a good first step, it is still not enough. A company that wants to go international must have an international strategy, and the five areas to work on for that international strategy are: planning, site design, content, publishing, maintenance and updates.
Design - This is one of the biggest problems related to multilingual web sites. Because languages are so different as in the Arabic language (it is written right to left) this type of problem causes problems in the web design area in as far as being able to set it up and adapt the site to the language, and as far as we know there still isn't any software that is successful in translating content into different languages. There is a loss of meaning when these software programs do the translation. The problem also lies in organization of this content, managing the unfamiliar content and using double byte characters.
So in essence, there still is not a viable solution for multilingual websites although several corporations are working to resolve the issue
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