Here are the details:

Web Globalization Trends to Watch
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT

To register, click here.

And if you can’t make the call, it will be recorded for playback.

Localization Certification Program: North America
June 18, 2008
Boeing Institute of International Business, Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO
I will join Nitish Singh in my hometown of St. Louis in talking about Web globalization best practices
Click here for more information

Documentation and Training Life Sciences 2008
June 23-28, 2008
Indianapolis, IN
I will present The Best Global Medical Web Sites (and why)
Click here for more information

If you’re in the neighborhood, please let me know.

The page illustrates one of the many the challenges of managing a Web site that supports so many languages. Even something supposedly as simple as this temporary page is not quite so simple. There are a whopping 17 languages on this page — from Chinese to German to Japanese.

Google generally does a very good job of “guessing” the Web user’s language through a combination of geolocation and browser language detection — and then providing users with their matching language. But in this case Google simply slapped up a “one-size-fits-most” Web page — which is a lot of visual noise.

And even with 17 languages, the page comes up a bit short in serving all Adwords users — as Google Adwords supports more than 35 languages.

What’s the lesson here? That when it comes to Web globalization, no detail is too small — including those details such as error strings, 404 pages, and “temporarily unavailable” pages.

The topic is global navigation — why it’s so important and how to improve upon it. I wrote an ebook about this topic two years ago. Since then, geolocation and language negotiation have become more commonly used and an increasing number of companies have launched splash global gateways — like Intel, which launched its first splash gateway just last week.

If I have time, I also plan to talk about IDNs — internationalized domain names — and why companies will need to register them (and may in fact be required to register them).

See you on June 3rd!

And mark your calendars for June 3rd, when I will host a second webinar, also sponsored by Lionbridge, to discuss the many aspects of global navigation — from splash global gateways, to country codes, to geolocation. I’ll include lots of real-world examples.

The Webinars are sponsored by Lionbridge.

Mark your calendar for May 7th at 1 pm (EST), when I will present the first Webinar — The Best Global Web Sites (and why) — which focuses on key findings from The 2008 Web Globalization Report Card.

The Webinars are free and open to executives who manage global Web sites, or have plans to do so.

To register, visit the Lionbridge site here.

New Communications Forum 2008
April 22-25, 2008
The Vineyard Creek Inn & Spa
Sonoma, CA
I will present Speaking in Tongues: Developing a Language Strategy to Maximize Global Reach
Click here for more information

Localization Certification Program: North America
June 18, 2008
Boeing Institute of International Business, Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO
I will join Nitish Singh in my hometown of St. Louis in talking about Web globalization best practices
Click here for more information

Documentation and Training Life Sciences 2008
June 23-28, 2008
Indianapolis, IN
I will present The Best Global Medical Web Sites (and why)
Click here for more information

Byte Level Research Discount
Save $300 off the regular price of admission. To claim your discount, you’ll need to register by telephone no later than April 15, 2008. Call +1 978-649-8555 and speak with conference discount coordinator Eileen Savary. Make sure to mention you’re calling about the Byte Level Research discount when you call. Eileen will take care of the rest.

I plan to focus on researching the globalization of corporate communications. I’ll also be speaking at their annual forum, coming this April:

New Communications Forum 2008
April 22-25, 2008
The Vineyard Creek Inn & Spa
Sonoma, CA

My presentation is “Speaking in Tongues: Developing a Language Strategy to Maximize Global Reach.”

I’d love to see you there!

I’ll also be speaking on Web globalization navigation on October 24th.

The conference is taking place at the Crowne Plaza San Diego, which isn’t all that far from where I live. So if you need advice on directions, etc, feel free to drop me a line.

And if you’d like to meet separately while you’re in town, please let me know.

For hotel reservations, mention IQPC & the conference name for a special discount of $140/night (this expires Sept. 30).

Crowne Plaza Hotel San Diego
2270 Hotel Circle North
San Diego, CA 92108
Reservations: 1-800-882-0858
Hotel: 619-297-1101
Fax: 619-297-6049

Web Globalization Conference Web Site

Although customer service isn’t the area that companies first tackle when they take their Web sites global, it can play a huge role in the ultimate success (or not) of each localized Web site. For starters, the global navigation has to make it easy for non-English speakers to find what they need.

On the Web, customers (like me) sometimes check before they buy a product to see if they can make sense of the user manual, and if that manual is poorly translated, well, user manuals can be hard enough to understand even if you do understand the language.

And then there is the knowledgebase, which in addition to the manuals may include user forums, product updates, and other assorted information. This is an area where I expect we’ll see a significant amount of investment in machine translation (MT) in the years ahead. Microsoft already uses MT to automatically translate parts of its knowledgebase into Japanese and Spanish — and reports very strong reviews from users. That’s not to say that MT content is perfect; far from it — but MT content is better than no content at all.

And it’s not just your customers you need to localize your Web sites for. You also need to consider your in-country distributors, phone support team, and other partners and how they interact with your Web content. I know of one company that uses MT specifically for in-country customer support people who will translate the knowledgebase in real time to provide support for customers in their country.

Anyway, if you’re going to attend the event — or just want to meet up in Charleston, please give ma a shout.

- There was a lot of buzz around machine translation (MT). Both Systran and Language Weaver are here and there were (at least) four sessions devoted to integrating Idiom WorldServer with MT. More important, the translation agencies and clients appeared serious about using MT, or at least seriously interested in what it can do.

- The Idiom LSP (language service provider) partnership program appears to be doing very well. There were quite a few translation agencies here who are very happy with WorldServer. And there are a number of other agencies I met with who were in the process of becoming LSP users of the product. More important, there is a sense that a community is forming among LSPs around WorldServer.

- New Idiom clients over the past few months include Bank of America, Mattel, and Apple.

- Old and new acronyms were abundant this week. idiom used MTM to refer to using integrated MT/TM (translation memory) tools. Jaap van der Meer, head of TAUS, used the acronym FAUT: fully automatic usable translation to refer to machine translation. Alan Melby countered with HUTTA: human-understanding translation with technology assistance. I heard DITA used lots over the past two days — and I won’t even bother trying to explain what this acronym stands for because it still won’t make any sense. What do all these new acronyms mean? In addition to making my head numb, I take them to mean that there are significant changes afoot in this industry and these new acronyms are attempting to describe not only the new technologies by the new paradigms that are evolving.

- Finally, after my presentation on Web globalization, I spoke with one executive regarding the challenges of migrating the US Web site to the .us country code domain. A small number of large corporations have done this already and I have heard reports of frustration with Google because Google.com isn’t spidering the .us sites in a way that gives the US sites good placement in search engine results. This I think could become a growing issue. In theory, companies should be hosting their US-specific sites at the .us domain, freeing up .com for global content and/or global navigation. But unless Google reworks its algorithms to effectively encourage companies to pursue this approach, I fear that Google will only encourage companies to do nothing at all. There is currently no uniquely labeled Google US search engine. While I have a feeling that Google will ultimately make the necessary changes, I hope this happens sooner than later.

Here are two that caught my eye — and might be worth an hour of your time…

Interwoven, Hilton International, and Translations.com to Host Webcast on Improving Customer Experience Worldwide through the Delivery of Personalized, Localized Content
Okay, so it looks like Interwoven installed the software, Translations.com did what their name says they do, and somehow Hilton Intl. got roped into doing a Webinar about it all. Actually, I do love a good case study and the hotel industry has been very agressive lately about Web globalization. I sat in on an SDL/Best Western case study awhile back and learned a good deal. Hotels have major content management challenges — from decentralized content creation, often-chaotic franchise/corporate business structures, and complex transactional and search challenges. According to the email:

Hilton International operates over 400 hotels across Europe and Asia including 260 Hilton-branded hotels as well as an additional 140 Scandic properties. In 2002, Hilton International outlined an aggressive strategy to build a series of highly-personalized and localized Web sites for its largest markets including the UK, Germany, and Japan. As part of this initiative, local language Web sites were also to be developed for the Hilton-owned Scandic brand hotels across the key Scandinavian countries and Finland. The company was faced with a number of challenges in implementing this new strategy. The project required the translation and editing of more than 4.5 million words of content and over 25,000 individual content files.

(UPDATE: I gotta keep up on my email. This one happend two days ago. But you can still catch the recording…)
(UPDATE, Part 2: Okay, I just listened to the Hilton call. The sound quality was horrible and the intros took forever, but there was some good meat to it. For instance, Hilton had estimated that it would take three years to pay back their Web globalization investment and found that they hit payback in 1.5 years. Translations.com says that the translation memory database is so built up now that they leverage a whopping 70% against new translation; what this means is that only 30% of new content needs to be translated by humans. )

And here’s another Webinar that might squeeze another hour out of my day…

Using XML for Product Information Publishing – The Road to Success at Siemens Medical Solutions
This Webinar is put together by Astoria, SDL, and Frank Gilbane, publisher of The Gilbane Report. The medical device community has been grappling with major content management and translation issues for years now — and the EU keeps increasing the number of languages they have to support just to do business there.

This call looks interesting because it promises to shed light on a real-world DITA application. According to the email, you’ll “learn how an effective information architecture can help you reach global markets faster and easier. And from Tanner AG, the information architects, learn how Siemens Medical went from strategy to solution implementation to publish its 2,200 product operation and maintenance documents in over 22 languages.”

So it’s nice to see SDL hosting a free Webinar on global authoring on July 20th and 21st. Here is the link to register.

The call promises to answer the following questions:

-> What is a word worth and how can you bring down the cost of writing global content in a world overloaded with information?
-> How can content re-use technologies help in the control of words?
-> How can you leverage existing translation assets to streamline your translation process?

Ben Urbina of Blast Radius will make sense of structured and unstructured authoring and Sophie Hurst of SDL will explain how to re-use translation at the authoring stage.

But if not, they have a Global Development & Deployment track planned.

The track promises that “developers will be provided with the tools needed to develop World-Ready solutions that support multiple writing systems that are easy to localize. IT professionals will learn important skills in deploying Windows XP and Office 2003 Multilingual User Interface version to support global businesses from New York to Beijing.”

Session details can be found here. Here are a few titles that jumped out at me:

- Deploying Office 2003 in a Multilingual Environment
- Custom Cultures and International Data
- Planning a Global Release: Many countries, Many Languages, One Process

I also recommend sitting in on Michael Kaplan’s sessions on designing databases for the world. If you’re running a SQL Server database and you’re not sure how to handle all those different character sets, this is the place to be.

I know over the years I have harped on Microsoft’s reluctance to invest fully in Web and software globalization (how come Google has 100+ language interfaces and Microsoft is stuck in the 40s). Oh, I know it’s all about ROI and piracy and so on and so forth. But Microsoft of all companies can afford a few loss leaders; for what the company has lost on the Xbox in one year it could localize MS Office into 125 languages.

But I digress.

Despite our differences, I really do recommend this event (and they didn’t pay me to say that). Microsoft has some truly top notch people working in their internationalization group and the company as a whole has done a great deal to advance the use of Unicode as the world’s default character set.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be there, but if you are, send me an update – or a PPT.

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VASONT SYSTEMS ANNOUNCES THIRD IN SERIES OF FREE CONTENT MANAGEMENT WEBINARS ON MULTILINGUAL PUBLISHING

Webinar features Real-Life Translation Management and Multilingual Publishing Success Story

Emigsville, PA, March 2, 2005 — Vasont Systems, a leading provider of content management software and data services, today announced the third Webinar in its free Webinar miniseries, entitled “Multilingual Publishing: How Do You Manage All Those Languages? It’s Greek to Me!” This three-part Webinar miniseries provides insight into how organizations can streamline their multilingual publishing and save thousands of dollars in translation costs. The third Webinar of the series, “A Real-Life Success Story,” will take place on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 1:00 pm EST.

Part 1 of this miniseries discussed ways to structure multilingual content using XML. In Part 2 of the Webinar miniseries, Blast Radius, TRADOS, and Vasont Systems identified ways to automate the translation process to save your organization time and money.  The last Webinar in this miniseries will feature a client of Vasont Systems, TRADOS, and Blast Radius. The March 15th Webinar will share their translation management and multilingual publishing success story and show how they are saving their organization thousands of dollars a year.

Guest Speakers include:
·         Paul Prescod of Blast Radius and co-author of “The XML Handbook.” Blast Radius is the maker of the XMetaL® product family, which simplifies XML-based content creation and management
·         Karl Kadie, Alliance Director for TRADOS Incorporated, the world leader in globalization software and services
·         Bret Freeman, Sales Engineer for Vasont Systems

To register, go to http://www.vasont.com/webinars/register-031505.asp.