Generally speaking, our relationship with universities is more focused on teaching than research. There is now a broad range of vocationally-minded localization training and related courses in various countries. Awareness of university learning opportunities is growing, largely thanks to the stimulus provided by LEIT (LISA Education Initiative Taskforce), LISA’s special interest group on education. And the announcement that François Grin, a Swiss economist who has written extensively on language economic issues, has been appointed to a special chair at the Geneva-based School of Translation and Interpretation, is a promising sign. But it is not clear how far localization and globalization as complex cultural and economic phenomena are already the object of useful academic research.

As far as I know, there is as yet no central knowledge repository of information about university theses or academic projects on the kinds of topics that might well interest our industry - comparative analyses of procedures, workflows, country practices, public locale awareness, cultural/psychological profiling of users, and so on.

One obvious reason is that there just isn’t much research of this type carried out. There are plenty of theses on historical and technical translation issues of all kinds, but apparently, far fewer on topics that might provide more lasting intellectual support – through work in macroeconomics, business studies, cross-cultural communication, international software design, etc. – to the industry. A useful first step, therefore, would be to have an in-depth review of existing work in the relevant disciplines that feed into GILT, allowing the industry to construct a roadmap of useful topics for future research.

Naturally, academic contributions do not meet the immediate strategic need for active market research, which requires constant monitoring and reporting by consultancies and researchers close to the action. But they could provide more sustained, detailed and analytic insight into comparative methods and results at different pressure points in localization, than is possible through corporate white papers or conference presentations. One obvious way for the industry to buy into, and even influence this seam of potential knowledge, is for vendors to sponsor research programs or academic appointments which explicitly label the activity as GILT-focused, as certain technology suppliers who already sponsor localization training in universities.

The Globalization Insider would naturally welcome any information that might allow us to flesh out our knowledge of academic interest in GILT-type topics, and explore the relevance of the results for the community as a whole. But as a taster of some interesting research on website design, read in this issue how Andy Smith applied a formal cross-cultural framework (premium content) to evaluate site acceptability. We are also publishing an overview of a very different piece of (non-academic) research by the EEEL Consortium (premium content) designed to provide a model for assessing Localization Maturity among content publishers and promote it as a collaborative industry ‘standard.’ And E. Smith Yewell provides a welcome update on the implications for localizers of the European Union In Vitro Diagnostic Directive. And for those with a less academic bent, LISA’s new GILT Industry 2003 Salary Survey provides a look at how much GILT professionals are paid around the world. Enjoy your summer/winter… and good reading!