Have you ever thought about offering your product internationally? Obviously the Internet by nature already makes your product available worldwide, but often that is not enough to really reach the global markets. Many web-services originate from English-speaking areas, or are created in English to accommodate a larger portion of the world’s population. However, there are many countries and cultures where people strongly prefer localized versions in their own language. Also considering emerging markets like China, India, Brazil and Russia where English is not as common among average consumers as in western countries it would be an ideal step to localize content.
If you already have a web-service that is only available in one language you can probably quite easily internationalize it. Internationalizing your project means that you prepare it (technically) to be available in various language versions. The actual translation of the content into other languages is the localization part. Simple web-services can be summed up in relatively small language files that you, your friends, or professional agencies can translate for you. With dynamic content it gets a bit harder, and the gain may not be worth the effort, but for more static applications you should definitely look into the possibility to internationalize it.
7 comments (leave a comment)
On WordPress blogs, use:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/global-translator/
by HAS on April 23, 2009 at 03:14
It can indeed be quite valuable to communicate with customers in their own language but it is something that needs great care as it can backfire if you don’t make an effort to keep your different language versions synchronized. I experienced something like that once.
by Martin H. on May 5, 2009 at 08:39
thinks you so much
http://www.4doom.com
by khan on May 5, 2009 at 18:08
CMSmadesimple (http://cmsmadesimple.org/) is a simple to use content mangagement system, which actually has a multi language fork. The coming release 2.0 will implement multiple languages in the core.msmadesimple
I tried several CMS with no success before I stumbled upon cmsmadesimple.
by F. Friesen on May 7, 2009 at 03:13
With such trusted financial products as Google check-out and Paypal, international money transactions are quite safe.
by lee on May 8, 2009 at 13:07
I have had better revenues from international customers, this work.
by lee on June 26, 2009 at 21:18
We wanted to improve our service with more languages but had a hard to find a good CMS that was both good for SEO and easy to translate in. After a lot of searching we decided to build our own system using Code Igniter. Something that has worked very well. Anyone that want to help us translate to more languages?
by Free Eye Exam on March 18, 2011 at 22:08