As the World Wide Web becomes a truly world-wide phenomenon, organizations with Websites are realizing the need to communicate with and serve an increasingly global audience. International Data Corporation reports that by 2002, 60% of Internet users will originate from outside the United States, as will 40% of e-commerce shoppers. This certainly bodes well for companies seeking to cross borders with their Internet business. But it also implies something about the language issues they will have to face in doing so. According to Forrester Research, business users are three times more likely to buy over the Internet when addressed in their own language. In other words, France is not the only place where local language fluency will be a prerequisite for online business success.

Companies with established Web businesses already understand the potential return on localizing, or globalizing, their Websites. However, surprisingly few have actually deployed multilingual sites successfully. The problem is that globalizing a Website is a more complex task than one might first imagine.

The challenge of getting a message right in many languages is something localization companies have known for years. As with hard copy and software, both the content and context of a Website message must be adapted for a particular audience. This means that just plugging a machine translation tool into your Web server is not going to do the trick. But neither will just plugging in human-translated versions of static site content.

Companies that currently maintain parts of their Website in multiple foreign languages have spent significant amounts of money and resources to tackle this problem the hard way. Their Web developers and translators go through the painstaking process of manually extracting content for translation from HTML, scripts, templates, and programs. Once these extracted elements of the site are translated, they need to be embedded back into a site's underlying code. Making these "replanted" elements actually function in a Web environment is extremely QA-intensive, and it often requires rewriting the original code. The process can be exceptionally complicated in cases where, for example, the elements have been translated into Asian languages and the "replanted" foreign-language text is in double-byte characters. As developers will attest, this extracting-embedding-reprogramming process basically amounts to reinventing the wheel.

Alternatively, other companies pursue an equally time-consuming method, commonly known as the "parallel sites" approach, to globalizing their Web-sites. Simply put, these companies do whatever it takes to build from scratch and then separately maintain multiple foreign-language versions of the original-language Website. More often than not, this involves US multinationals giving to their different foreign offices the responsibility of managing their different foreign-language Websites.

It goes without saying how expensive the parallel sites approach can become. Ultimately, this approach also becomes unwieldy. Of the companies that have published parallel sites, many have back-tracked - they realize the risk involved in asking a foreign office to convey a global corporate image over the Web correctly, consistently, and on an ongoing basis. One good thing about parallel sites is they accommodate the need to tailor some amount of Website content for specific audiences. However, most Web-sites also contain a lot of functionality and at least some amount of content that should be consistently represented in all languages. Given that most Websites experience frequent content and functional updates, managing these changes across multiple sites spirals into an impossible task.

So what is the answer to the Website globalization challenge? Until recently, no single technology has existed to help companies effectively and efficiently build, deploy and manage multilingual Websites. But now, Website globalization technology solutions are being developed and used to more elegantly combine Web development and translation expertise. The most promising solutions have little to do with parallel site structure. Instead, the good Web globalization solutions replace the old extraction-embedding-reprogramming process with something that can achieve the same, or a better, result and sustain this result in a correct and up-to-date fashion over a long period of time. The better of these solutions provide for a centrally managed, start-to-finish workflow system that integrates input from Web developers and translators. The best of these solutions can, as a system itself, integrate into a wide variety of Web development environments - and keep up with the front- and back-end evolution of even the most sophisticated high-end site.

At the forefront of advancements in Website globalization are a few new companies that are establishing themselves as the language experts of the Web. The trend is in many ways reminiscent of how localization companies began to prove their relevance and value to software a decade ago. What these new Website globalization companies have in common is more than a vision for what the Web will look like in three years. They understand that properly addressing the challenge of globalizing Websites requires recognizing the inherent nature of the Web. As a medium that is driving towards increasing viewer customization, the Web is inherently dynamic in content, interactive in form, and constantly changing in functionality. This means that Website globalization is an intensive and ongoing process, one that can be painful through brute force, but significantly facilitated by innovative technology.

How should globalization technology work? Website globalization solutions should effectively function on three levels: element extraction, translation and development workflow, and system integration. First, the text, graphics, and other resources on the original site in need of translation need to be unobtrusively extracted from the original site, or a copy of it. Then, a streamlined workflow involving both translators and developers should be in place to ensure that extracted elements are translated, edited, and reincorporated into a functional Website structure. Finally, the previous two processes should be designed to occur on an ongoing basis within a system that readily integrates into existing Web development and production environments. For any Website, be it e-commerce, marcoms, or corporate, these three steps are needed during the globalization process. The mark of a good Website globalization solution, therefore, is its ability to carry out and combine these three steps fluidly and coherently.

Generally speaking, there are also two critical objectives to remember when approaching Website globalization and evaluating new technologies. First, companies should centralize Website development and management wherever possible. Redundant resources are not cost-effective and they are certainly not time-efficient. Second, companies should retain as much flexibility as possible in dealing with "context", as well as textual and graphical content. When it comes to colors, design, layout and functionality, marketing executives may not know exactly how they will need to redesign or revamp their company's site next week, next month or next year - but they do know that they will. In the world of the Internet, with its rapid change and unpredictability, it is all the more important to practice fore-sight. This means that flexibility is crucial. When choosing Website globalization, a company should choose a strategy that will keep up with the changing needs of its business.

Eric Silberstein
CEO
Idiom Technologies
298 Western Avenue, Suite 3
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
Tel.: +1 (617) 492-1455
Fax: +1 (617) 492-5988
E-mail: info@idiomtech.com
http://www.idiomtech.com