I’ve been writing this blog since 2002.
Back when I started out, I wasn’t sure how long I would stick with this “blogging” thing and I didn’t really want to make any investment in software (besides time).
I tried a few different platforms before settling on WordPress.
It was free — certainly a selling point. But it’s wasn’t [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Software Localization'
What’s the world’s most global blogging platform?
January 12th, 2010 · 2 Comments
Tags: Software Localization · Translation · Web Globalization
Mac Snow Leopard International Bug
January 2nd, 2010 · No Comments
I recently got around to upgrading to Snow Leopard.
Along the way, I discovered a rather interesting bug.
It’s not a huge deal, but a bug nonetheless. And one likely to cause a fair amount of confusion.
First of all, if you have never modified your language settings (The “International” button on the System Preferences menu) then you [...]
Tags: Apple · Software Localization
Translation crowdsourcing is the new black — and you can tweet me on that
October 19th, 2009 · No Comments
Was there any doubt that Twitter would not try to crowdsource its translations?
After Facebook proved that it could use volunteers to go from 1 to 100 languages in two years, it was just a matter of time before Twitter adopted the same model.
Twitter is starting out with the FIGS (French, Italian, German, and Spanish). And [...]
Tags: Crowdsourcing · Google · Languages · Software Localization · Translation · Twitter · Web Globalization
Facebook: From 1 to 100 languages in two years
March 17th, 2009 · 1 Comment
It was just over a year ago that Facebook started localizing itself for the world.
As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later, Facebook has done an impressive job of going global.
Om Malik recently reported some key stats from [...]
Tags: Business globalization · China · Crowdsourcing · Culture · Global navigation · Google · India · Software Localization · Translation · Web Globalization
Watch out ProZ, here comes Google Translation Center
August 4th, 2008 · 14 Comments
Within the translation industry, ProZ is widely known as the leading public network of freelance translators and buyers of translation services.
But here comes Google…
According to Blogoscoped, Google is about to launch the Google Translation Center.
This is an exciting development, though I don’t expect everyone to suddenly ditch ProZ for Google. Why? Because much of the [...]
Tags: Domain names · Google · Machine Translation · Software Localization · Translation · Vendors
Has Google hit a language ceiling?
July 24th, 2008 · No Comments
Google announced that they now have 30 products available in 30 languages. And many of these products, such as Gmail and Adwords, now support 40 languages.
Here is a graph they published of the rate of growth of their language support. It’s a very impressive visual, but I found it potentially misleading.
What is being displayed is [...]
Tags: Google · Languages · Software Localization · Web Globalization
Will Facebook become the world’s largest translation platform?
July 23rd, 2008 · 1 Comment
Techcrunch reports from Facebook’s developer conference today in which company announced that it would open its “crowdsourcing” translation platform to its legion of application developers. Here’s the press release excerpt:
As a result of the worldwide success of Facebook’s translation system, the company has opened up the Translation Application to any developer using Facebook Platform. Beginning [...]
Tags: Business globalization · Crowdsourcing · Software Localization · Translation · Web Globalization
The iPhone App localization opportunity
July 14th, 2008 · 3 Comments
So after a slow start upgrading to the iPhone 2.0 OS on Friday, I’ve since had a chance to review a number of the apps and have been very impressed so far (though a few did cause the iPhone to crash).
As I reviewed the Apps in the iTunes store I began to notice that they [...]
Tags: Apple · Software Localization · Translation · Vendors
Google Adwords unavailable (in 17 languages)
June 8th, 2008 · No Comments
I tried to login to Google Adwords recently and was met with the following “temporarily unavailable” Web page:
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 [...]
Tags: China · Events · Google · Software Localization · US Hispanic Market · Web Globalization
The art & science of global navigation: June 3rd
May 11th, 2008 · No Comments
My second Lionbridge Webinar is scheduled for June 3rd at 1 pm EST and you can register for it here.
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 [...]
Tags: China · Domain names · Events · Global navigation · Software Localization · Vendors · Web Globalization

