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 the easiest blog to install or maintain in the early years. ISPs weren’t exactly offering it as a one-click install back then. And don’t get me started on the challenges of updating plug-ins.

But WordPress has certainly come a long way.

I was surprised to learn that, thanks to volunteer contributions, WordPress is now available in more languages than Blogger or TypePad.

• TypePad is available in nine languages.
• Blogger/Blogspot (owned by Google) is available in 49 languages.

WordPress is available in more than 60 languages.

Not bad.

And now WordPress is now launching a software translation platform: GlotPress.

Makes sense. Offer to others the very platform you used to localize your software.

I’ll be interested to see how this new platform develops.

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 won’t hit this bug.

If, however, you have made some changes to your language settings, read on…

Here is what my International settings menu looked like before the upgrade:

You’ll notice that I have U.S. English at the top of the list, followed by Japanese, followed by a “neutral” English. Normally, U.S. English would be followed by neutral English, which is the source of the bug.

When I began upgrading to Snow Leopard, I was presented with the usual legalese page — except that this one was in Japanese:

Apparently, Apple ignored my U.S. English setting and figured I had my computer set up for Japanese, hence the Japanese text.

To fix this, I simply bumped up the neutral English language setting ahead of Japanese.

NOTE: The same bug will appear if you have British English at the top of the list followed by a language other than English.

UPDATE: This bug may also impact the results of Spotlight as well. That is, you could see results in Japanese mixed with English. I haven’t been able to repro it myself but have encountered a few blog posts related to this issue.

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 here is a video tutorial from Twitter that shows you how how the platform works.

Crowdsourcing is the new black these days, and much of it deserved. But despite the buzz, companies should be very careful before embracing the model.

Very few companies are translation-worthy

Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, TED, and Twitter have legions of fans who are happy to lend their translation skills. But few corporate sites or services are so translation worthy. And there’s the ever-constant risk of translator backlash or burnout. We are in uncharted territory, and as more companies pursue this model, we’re going to see more and more efforts backfire. Hey, maybe we’ll even see companies begin to “pay” their volunteers in non-monetary forms of compensation. Which leads me to…

Crowdsourcing may not save you much on translation

The translation platform, the management of the platform, the management of the volunteers — they all require resources. And the odds are that you’ll still want to retain professional translators to manage the amateurs, which is not a bad thing. There is a peace of mind in having a vendor who does this sort of thing for a living signing off on a newly localized web site before it goes live. In the end, translation crowdsourcing is not about saving money.

As far as I can tell, Twitter has only a thousand or so text strings that require translation. In the time the company devoted to building this translation platform, it could probably have had the site localized in 50 or more languages.

Over time there probably will be cost savings, but I would argue that cost savings should not be the motivator and probably wasn’t the motivator for Twitter.

The platform companies develop to support crowdsourcing should have other measures of success, such as user engagement and testing, partner opportunities, and developer involvement.

For example, on the Twitter Translate information page, this paragraph jumped out at me:

Will my favorite applications be translated, too?
We know that Twitter is not all about Twitter.com, so our global reach shouldn’t be limited to Twitter.com either. That’s why we’re planning to give our developer community access to the translation files so they can create wonderful apps that use the translations, too.

This is where Twitter is headed with the platform, as well as Facebook and Google. Once you have the platform, you can get creative with it — expand it to developers so that they can quickly localize their apps. You can even try to open up the platform for “partner” sites to use — which is what Facebook is now doing.

As companies comes to grips with social media, they are slowly learning to let go. Employees blog and tweet. Customers post content on corporate sites, and now they are co-creating the localized products.

The top-down localization model is giving way to the bottom-up model, and this is a profound change, even if it’s limited to a handful of companies — albeit companies that represent a few hundred million users. I’m still trying to understand how far this phenomenon will go.

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 Facebook’s global expansion efforts. Among them:

• Facebook is available in 43 languages and is in the process of being translated into another 60 languages.
• 40 percent of Facebook users are not using English.
• 25,000 volunteers helped translate Facebook into Turkish last year, and there are now 9 million Turkish-language users signed up for Facebook.

Even though only 43 languages are available now, if you add the Facebook Translations application (which i really recommend doing if you’re into this sort of thing), you’ll see the other 60 languages in the pipeline — many of which look pretty much good to go.

Here’s what the Translations pull-down menu looks like:

So many languages my computer is lacking for fonts.

It’s a very safe bet to say that Facebook will support more than 100 languages a year from now.

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 appeal of ProZ is the community, which Google does not appear to be trying to support. Still, freelancers will certainly want to investigate this potential new resource.

I’ve called out ProZ as one company under threat from Google Translation Center. But EVERY translation agency needs to keep a close eye on this service. It could be a threat. It could also end up being something translation agencies use themselves — instead of paid platforms from SDL. Naturally, for this to happen this new platform has a lot of evolving to do. Still, I can’t help but wonder.

There is no mention of whether or not Google will support machine translation and/or translation memory. I’m assuming they will.

I have LOTS of questions and this service isn’t even live yet. So we shall see what happens. But this is big news, no question.

I wrote awhile back, that the translation industry as we know it is over. The technologists have taken over and they’re bringing brute force computing and massive networks to the table to reduce costs and increase time to market. This is just another sign of this macro trend.

What do you think? Is Google going to disrupt the translation industry or is this new platform going to fall flat?

(Thx Chris for the heads up!)

Update: I just read an insightful article on this Google’s service at GigaOm…

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 not the total number of “unique” languages Google supports, just the total number of product/language combinations. And that’s an important detail.

Google is nowhere near supporting 1,400 different languages. Their search engine interface, which supports roughly 120 languages, represents the maximum number of languages the company supports. And this number has only increased by about 10 languages over the past two years.

The other Google applications appear to have peaked (for now) at between 40 and 43 languages.

To support 40 languages is remarkable. Based on my survey of 225 global Web sites in the 2008 Web Globalization Report Card, fewer than 10 companies support 40 or more languages (English excluded).

Still, it looks as if Google is now focused on getting its increasingly wide selection of software up to the 40-language mark rather than aggressively pushing into brand new languages. Gmail, for instance, now appears to be adding a language or two per year — rather than 10 to 20, which is the pace we’ve been seeing with YouTube and Blogger.

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 today, any Facebook developer can make their application available in any of the 20 languages that are currently available on Facebook, with 69 more coming soon.

Developers can now access the Translation Application to either translate their applications themselves, or open up translation of their application to Facebook users around the world, who will work together to define it in their native languages.

Developers are naturally very excited about this development because they can tap into the same group of enthusiastic volunteers who are currently translating Facebook’s interface into different languages. Or, developers can pay translators or agencies to do the translation.

Facebook knows that part of the value of its platform are the third-party applications. As I mentioned a few days ago, I was concerned that so many of Apple’s iPhone apps are currently in English only. And it’s safe to say that Apple is nowhere close to launching anything similar to what Facebook is now doing.

As Facebook goes global with its platform, it wants all of its 400,000 developers (more than half of which live outside of the US) to come along as well. Opening up the translation platform is a win-win for everyone.

And we could see Facebook’s translation platform become a force onto itself.

It will be interesting to see what role translation agencies and freelance translators will play. I see a nice opportunity, because some of these app developers will want to pay a premium to have professional translators involved.

PS: Techcrunch also shares some data on Facebook’s global traffic growth — a sign that this translation program is perfectly timed.

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 were available only in English. Here is a screen grab from the AOL IM app:

Just to be sure about this, I also visited iTunes Spain and looked up the same AOL IM App. And as you see here, it is available only in English:

As far as I can tell, the only iPhone App currently available in a language other than English is Apple’s own Remote App, available in these languages:

I know it’s early yet. But keep in mind that the iPhone launched globally on Friday, which means there are a lot of markets that have a localized iPhone but only one fully localized iPhone App to use on them.

This means there is a HUGE opportunity for the software localization vendors of the world to help these software developers take these apps global. Apple says it sold one million iPhones over the past three days — and 10 million apps.

Here are some of the companies that currently offer non-localized apps: eBay, MySpace, Bloomberg, Travelocity, MLB.com, Oracle, and Salesforce.com.

If you spot any iPhone Apps that have been localized outside of English, please let me know. This will be very interesting to follow…

UPDATE: Adam Houser just alerted me to  Anime Match by Jirbo, shown here:

This app is available in Japanese. It’s a catchy little game actually — and free!

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!

In this article, I do just that, and I render a verdict as to which Web site is better.

Search

The best way to compare search engine quality is to compare searches.

I recently input three Chinese keywords for my experiment:

• 许霆 (Xu Ting: A Chinese citizen who was recently involved in a controversial criminal case)
• 次级房贷 (Subprime mortgage)
• 看羹吃饭 (Kan-Geng-Chi-fan: A phrase used and recognized by a relatively small number of Chinese, meaning that you have to think carefully before taking action)

These keywords represent three different categories of information people search for online. Xu Ting is a hot keyword in China at the moment but it has received little international media coverage. Subprime mortgage, on the other hand, is a foreign concept and the term has been transliterated into Chinese characters from the English equivalent. Kan-Geng-Chi-fan is used within a specific dialect that is not used by the majority of Chinese citizens.

Okay, here are the results as of April 18, 2008:

“Xu Ting”

• Baidu: 2,000,000 results
• Google.com: 1,440,000 results
• Google.cn: 1,330,000 results

It would seem that Baidu knows much more about Xu Ting than Google, although I did not verify that every result referred to this particular individual.

Interestingly, in the first results page of both google.com and google.cn, one of the search results directed users to Baidu Post — Baidu’s popular user forum.

Overall, I would rate both sites equally because the top 20 results from each search engine were highly qualified and I could easily find information I wanted from there. Verdict: A tie.

“Subprime mortgage”

• Baidu: 1,050,000 results
• Google.com: 387,000 results
• Google.cn: 1,540,000 results

This time google.cn appears to do much better than Baidu. But if we look closely at the top 20 search results, we’ll find there are 7 results at google.com and 5 results at google.cn that direct us to Web sites that use traditional Chinese characters, which are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and by the overseas Chinese community.

It can be rather challenging for the mainland Chinese to read traditional Chinese, though they can understand most of the message. Nonetheless, this mix of simplified and traditional Characters is not the most user-friendly approach. Verdict: Baidu wins.

“Kan Geng Chi Fan”

• Baidu.com 207 results
• Google.com 4,000,000 results
• Google.cn 247,000 results

At first glance, Google produced overwhelmingly more information than Baidu. However, if we examine the details, Google did not perform so well. Neither Google.com nor Google.cn produce an accurate search result within the first 10 pages respectively, while all the 207 search results from Baidu are accurate. Verdict: Baidu wins again.

Based on these three searches, Google comes across as a bit complicated and “foreign” to Chinese users. Baidu is the superior Chinese search engine.

Products

Both Google and Baidu are trying to leverage their network effects to promote other products. Google has many excellent products, but not every product has performed well in China. For example, Google Maps is widely used by American users. Unfortunately, Google Maps in China is unable to provide the same features due to unavailability of mapping data in China. Google’s satellite map currently only covers the major Chinese cities. Should Google acquire better maps, it would have a clear advantage over Baidu, which doesn’t offer the same degree of functionality and usability in its map tool.

Although music copyright is a controversial issue within China, the market reality is that millions of Chinese Internet users download free music online. Baidu understands this reality and its music search product — which presents a list of links for free music downloads when people search by song, singer, or label — is extremely popular. Google is unable to compete with Baidu in this regard due to its adherence to US copyright laws.

Another example is Baidu Post, an online forum allowing Internet user to create new topics based on search keywords and provide commentary. When people search online by keyword, they can also follow these keywords to Baidu Post, where they may find additional information — or at least find out what others think of the selected keywords.

Online forums are a very important medium in China for distributing information online. I think an important reason for this is because the Chinese, as well as many businesses, want to remain anonymous. While this may change in the years ahead as the next generation embraces social networking sites, for the time being, online forums are dominant. Baidu also offers a blog platform (Hi Baidu) while Google has localized Blogger into Chinese, very few Chinese people currently use it.

Local culture and consumer behavior are critical factors in determining whether a product will succeed in an overseas market or not. So far, Google products have not been as appealing as Baidu to Chinese users.

The Brand Name

The name of Baidu (百度) is from a beautiful Chinese ancient poem:

Thousands of times, I looked for my girl;

Suddenly, at some point, I stopped and looked back,

I found she was just over there among a bunch of lanterns.

This poem, written by Qiji Xin, who lived in the Song Dynasty nearly 1000 years ago, is still very popular in China and also taught in high schools. Baidu in Chinese means thousands of times. In Chinese culture, this poem communicates one’s desire to achieve his/her dreams. Obviously, meshes well with the services offered by Baidu, a company that claims it better understands Chinese users and Chinese culture.

Google started to use its Chinese name Guge (谷歌) in 2006. Guge (goo-ge) is transliterated from Google and it literally means “the song of grain” in Chinese. A survey conducted in 2006 shows 84.6% Chinese do not like this name. I think the most important reason is that Chinese people want to feel international and modern. This is also one reason you may see many Chinese companies using English words in their marketing materials, as it creates an international effect. The “song of grain” presents an image of the agricultural society that the Chinese people are striving to break away from.

Google has exerted a good deal of effort in localizing its name for China but it has not yet been accepted by the Chinese people. It may take some time. Some companies have chosen to simply use their English names in China, avoiding localization altogether, such as IBM.

To sum up, Baidu definitely has an edge over Google in China. But it is early yet and Google has been doing things such as redesigning its Chinese home page, which may resonate with users. The key takeaway here is that every new market is a new challenge; just because you are number one at home does not mean you will be number one in every country you enter. Should Baidu enter the US market some day, it will face many of the same challenges that Google is now facing in China.

If you’ve read this blog recently, you are aware of John’s reports on Facebook’s efforts to translate its Website into German and other European languages. I am a keen observer of the “kraut-sourcing” efforts. However, in Germany Facebook faces an entrenched competitor: “StudiVZ”.

StudiVZ is a social networking platform, very similar to Facebook. In contrast to Facebook, the positioning and the target group is extremely focused (for example, during signup you have to explicitly provide your high school or university). There are other affiliated networks like “Sch�lerVZ” specifically targeting younger people and pupils (until they are “old enough” to join StudiVZ).

In the past StudiVZ has tried to expand into other countries, too, and translated the Website into French, Spanish, Italian and Polish. But despite its efforts and except for Poland, the results were poor: the number of users were well below expectations. This led to a reorganisation of the staff, e.g. reduced teams which operate independently in each country. And now StudiVZ announced that it will “hibernate” its international expansion and instead it will focus its efforts in a renewed and improved software architecture.

For me this a clear move to counter Facebook’s advance in Europe, and especially Germany. Let’s see how the opponents stack up:

• Facebook has an estimated user base of 60 million users worldwide and app. 600.000 in Germany. StudiVZ has app. 4,8 million users and Sch�lerVZ app. 2,7 millions. Numbers are currently increasing sharply. Facebook 0 : StudiVZ 1
• StudiVZ is extremely focused in marketing its platform to students and teenagers. Therefore the numbers above show a deep market penetration in this growing group. Facebook 0 : StudiVZ 2
• Facebook has a lot of venture capital backing, while StudiVZ has the backing of only the German publishing group Holzbrinck. Facebook 1 : StudiVZ 2
• StudiVZ is trailing Facebook in technology and needs to modernize its software architecture. Right now StudiVZ is a “closed shop” and does not yet allow independent developers in its ecological niche. And the renewed technology might take some time to completely roll out. Facebook 2 : StudiVZ 2
• StudiVZ has translated its Website into several languages and can exploit this language base in the future. Facebook has a very large and expanding global user base. Shortly they will have the same language capabilities. Facebook 3 : StudiVZ 3.

Right now I cannot see a clear winner here in Germany, but I see some small advantages for Facebook. But winning over the users from StudiVZ will be difficult and will consume time and money. Maybe a takeover would do the trick.

Moreover, the global reach of users is crucial for potential partners, e.g. for content providers or technological partners. I am referring here to the rumours of a Nokia+Facebook deal. I reckon the combination of mobile Web and global social networking will be one of the most interesting developments in the near future.

But don’t forget Orkut and Android, Google’s social platform and mobile technology… Ah, what interesting times we live in!

Links

• Interview with the CEO of StudiVZ (in German)
• StudiVZ

Awhile back I wondered how Apple would localize its Web keypad, which features the .com button to accelerate the input of URLs. I own an iPhone and really do make use of this button.

So I took a look at the German keypad demo today and here is what I found. If you look closely here, you’ll see that if the user presses and holds the .com key the .de button also appears:

This is an interesting way to provide two such shortcuts.

But I think Apple made a big mistake here. The .de key should not be the optional button, it should be the default button; .com should be the optional button.

After all, the most popular German Web sites all have .de extensions. Even American companies that are successful in Germany, such as Google and Amazon, use the .de domain.

Now what about UK? Is there an optional .co.uk button available by pressing .com? Oddly, no.

What this says to me is that Apple either:

1. Apple was in too much of a hurry to launch in Europe that it didn’t really put the time and thought into localizing the interface correctly.
2. Apple did indeed take its time localizing for these two markets, but the folks in charge inherently believed that .com is more important than local domains.
3. Apple tested the interface both ways in both local markets and found that this solution is indeed whats users want.

I vote for scenario number 2. What do you think?

- Arabic
- Bulgarian
- Catalian
- Croatian
- Icelandic
- Indonesian
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Malay
- Serbian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Tagalog

Since languages span borders, the total number of country domains now supported by iGoogle number more than 70.

According to the Google Blog, “with this launch, more than 99% of Internet users can take advantage of these features in their native language.”

Based on my research, your Web site needs to support 10 languages to reach more than 80% of the world’s Internet users. To get to 99%, you definitely have to exceed 30 to 35 languages (depending on the mix), which very few companies have done. In the 2007 Web Globalization Report Card, out of the 200 Web sites reviewed, only 28 sites exceeded 30 languages and only 3 sites exceeded 40 languages.

The languages that Google has recently added reflects a larger Web globalization trend. Large multinationals that already support the core Western European and Asian languages are now turning their attention to Eastern and Northern Europe and the Middle East.

While a Slovakian Web site may be off the radar for most global marketing executives, it may not be off their radar for very long.

Today I tried to register on a popular consumer Web site that will remain nameless.

My default country came up as US Virgin Islands for some strange reason. So I went to the menu thinking that my country of residence would be just a few ticks away.

I was wrong, as you see here:

Where’s the United States?

I scrolled around a bit and, sure enough, found my country at the top of the list…

Oh, here it is, right above Afghanistan

I understand why this sort of thing happens. It is assumed that because most people who are registering on this site are American, that they should not be required to scroll down very far to find it. As for the poor souls who live in the UK or Venezuela, well, they just have to be patient.

At a minimum, the US should be repeated on the list, so people like me can find it.

Ultimately, this type of geographic favoritism cannot last. I know of one multinational that did away with it simply because execs in the foreign offices did not appreciate seeing the US placed ahead of their countries. And it implicitly sends the wrong message: It says that you’re an American company selling to foreigners, rather than a global company selling to locals.

So what’s the alternative? I recommend using geolocation, which does a very good job of guessing where the Web user is located automatically. It’s not a perfect solution, as someone may register from one country even though he or she lives in another country. But this type of inconvenience will be the exception and not the rule.

This has created a bit of a headache for companies and organizations that manage things like maps and locale-dependent software and even those country code extensions that you see on Web sites, like www.apple.fr in France or www.dell.de in Germany, and so on.

The country code for Serbia and Montenegro was .cs. Well, so much for that one. Two new two-letter country codes were assigned: .me for Montenegro and .rs for Serbia.

Michael Kaplan of Microsoft writes about the challenges of providing locale support, particularly language support, for a country in which there is debate as to whether Montenegrin is a unique language or a dialect of Serbian. He also writes that there could be four unique locales for Montenegro, based on character set and language variations.

So long as companies keep changing names, borders, and languages, there will be new and interesting challenges in the field of software and Web globalization.

Microsoft first migrated to Unicode for its Windows 2000 operating system. In doing so, it cleared the way for faster development of global software. It also allows users to more easily share documents that includes multiple languages and scripts.

This Microsoft article details why Microsoft upgraded to the latest version of Unicode for Vista, coming to a computer near you, and how this will benefit developers. In short, the benefits of doing so include the ability to support a few more languages, enhance security and collation, and support internationalized domain names (something I’ll be writing more about in months ahead).

It’s nice to see Microsoft upgrading to 5.0, as this will prod other software makers to do the same, although most no longer need much prodding.

Recent developments suggest that this “minority” language is not going gently into that good night.

Google currently supports Quechua with a localized search engine.

And it is not the only software company to support this language.

I read this morning, via Michael Kaplan’s blog, that Microsoft now supports Quechua in Windows and its Office software. It will be announcing this language support with the newly elected president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, who is an Indian. I should note that this level of support only applies to menus and commands; I don’t expect to see a knowledgebase translated anytime soon. Still, a little support is much much better than no support.

In addition, The Economist features an article on Quechua, noting that a recently elected member of Peru’s Congress is now speaking Quechuan instead of Spanish.

This high-level support for the language will help ensure that multinational companies provide support as well, a positive sign for the one of the world’s oldest surviving languages.

It still is free, but now it supports lots of little desktop applications, known as gadgets, and 28 languages, including Finnish, Turkish, and Romanian (excerpted here).

You can reach more than 80% of the world’s Internet users with just 10 languages. So Google is clearly making good progress in expanding the reach of this application.

However, for those of us on Macs (like me) Google Desktop is still out of reach.

I realize that this may not sound like the most exciting read, but I recommend downloading a copy (hey, it’s free!).

I’m reading it now and have found that it includes good advice for anyone involved in Web or software globalization. Most of the concepts carry over to any bilingual application.

And there were some interesting little nuggets about Welsh that I wasn’t aware of. For example, here is the appropriate way to alpha sort the following three words:

- label
- lori
- llefrith

The third word appears like it should be bumped up a notch, but the “ll” is actually one character: a diagraph. Digraph letters that occur in the Welsh alphabet include: ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th. When sorting, the “ll” falls after “l.”

It’s often assumed that languages that use the same basic letters all sort the same way. Not so. You’ll find these little quirks in a host of Latin-based languages.

You can download the guide here

Robert Scoble has taped an interesting interview with Michael Kaplan, who’s the technical lead in charge of the globalization of the upcoming Windows Vista OS.

If you’ve got a half hour to spare, it’s worth a watch. It gets a bit techie at times but there are some grest nuggets of wisdom for anyone involved in software or Web globalization.

If you don’t have the time, here are a few items that jumped out at me…

-> Vista is being localized into roughly 100 languages (some partially) — this is, as I understand, about twice the number of languages that were supported by Windows XP. By the way, this blows away the number of languages support by Mac.

-> Microsoft is “opening it up” and “getting out of the way” — which means that they know that they won’t be able to localize Windows into a thousand languages anytime soon, so they are working to create the tools to allow folks around the world to customize Windows to their languages and cultures. I’m glad to see Microsoft doing this — Michael introduced a nifty keyboard tool that you can use to create your own keyboard layouts. Very nice.

-> Vista will support roughly 200 locales. This is a big increase from XP. A locale includes such elements as language, date format, currency format, etc.

-> “You can’t know everything” — is Michael’s advice to other world-be internationalization engineers. So true. This is one thing I really love about this field — there are just too many languages and cultural nuances for anyone to know it all. It means that we’re always learning something new and that teamwork is essential to success.

-> Get to know Unicode. Unicode came up several times during the interview. Microsoft was an early promoter of Unicode and Unicode truly has revolutionized global software development. The last remaining non-Unicode area on the Internet is the DNS — which engineers are grappling with as we speak.

Anyway, it’s a great interview. Check it out.

Michael also has a blog

This is also the type of project that only a few localization firms can handle. It requires a mix of engineers, translators, and project managers skilled in software localization. Also, the effective use of translation memory tools is essential.

This project began as a Bowne Global Solutions project and — due to the acquisition — was completed as a Lionbridge project.

So what exactly is DITA?

According to the press release, “DITA consists of a set of design principles for creating “information-typed” modules at a topic level. DITA enables organizations to deliver content as closely as possible to the point-of-use, making it ideal for applications such as integrated help systems, web sites, and how-to instruction pages. DITA’s topic-oriented content can be used to exploit new features or delivery channels as they become available.”

Still not clear?

I’m afraid this is one of those standards that only an information architect could love. Fortunately for me, I did have the benefit of an Idiom presentation on DITA recently. The presentation illustrated how the standard will aid in managing content across languages as well as across departments and media (Web, print, mobile).

And there is a real need among enterprises for an XML standard that allows them to “chunk” content in a way that allows for such wide-scale reuse and translation. I’ll know more when I see some real-world success stories, of which there are none as of yet. But I’m sure the folks at Idiom and Arbortext are writing up their case studies as we speak.

So where will we be seeing DITA commercially?

Here are the principal vendor supporters: Idiom, Arbortext, BMC, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Oracle, and Sun. The ones to watch are not just these folks but also the folks not on the list, particularly Documentum, Interwoven, and Vignette. It will be interesting to see if other CMS vendors jump on the DITA bandwagon.

If you want to learn more, and have a few hours to spare, here are the tech specs on DITA.

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.

StarOffice costs a great deal less than Microsoft’s Office suite, which makes it particularly appealing in an emerging market like Russia. While Microsoft’s Office suite is available more languages than StarOffice, the gap is narrowing.

The greatest reason why I think Gmail has a good shot at popular usage is Google’s expertise at localizing the platform for developing markets. I don’t expect Microsoft to localize Outlook for Bihari, Tonga or Swahili anytime soon, but Google is well on its way toward supporting these languages on its main platform.

It remains to be seen if Google throws the resources fully localizing Gmail, but the potential is certainly there.

Why have the larger software developers overlooked (or ignored) minority languages thus far? Here’s what Ori has to say:

“Do other developers show disrespect by not issuing localized versions of their products? Not necessarily. Many of them, I feel, simply lack the awareness or tend to ignore markets outside English-speaking countries as ‘irrelevant.’ I can understand the financial sense of this decision, at least with respect for some languages. But I think this is also a misunderstanding of the situation. The fact that Czech, Greek or Swedish users don’t make a fuss about getting their localized versions doesn’t mean that they don’t need them. They do. They’re just being civil about it, or, worse, are simply accustomed to being ignored.”

RedleX uses an open source localization model — asking volunteers to contribute in the effort. Meanwhile, a company like Microsoft says that it can’t afford to provide its full-featured software to emerging markets at reduced prices; instead, it offers a stripped-down version of its software, known as “Microsoft Lite.”

Yet there is nothing “lite” about RedleX’s software. Instead of penalizing an emerging market with stripped-down software, it offers full-featured software to all markets at a reasonable price.

Says Ori: “From our point of view as software makers — and I think this would apply to all types of makers — the best way we can approach the Digital Divide is by ‘ignoring’ it. That is, we’re selling to countries considered across this Divide not because they’re across it, but because we think Mellel is something they can use and benefit by… and help us pay the bills while we are at it. When making a deal with a dealer in an “across” country, or with a student or school, we lower the price significantly. We’re not doing this as a ‘favor’ to anyone; we do it because it makes good business sense. We’d rather sell a million copies of Mellel to India for $2 a copy than sell ten for $40 a copy. This, I think, is the most practical way to treat this divide and other ‘divides.’”

I’d love to see RedleX tackle the Windows OS.

As I’ve mentioned before, Microsoft’s response over the past decade to a piracy-prone market has been to simply ignore that market. That is, until Linux came along. Now Microsoft is selling a scaled-down, less expensive operating system referred to as Microsoft Lite. According to the article, Microsoft has begun rolling out Microsoft Lite in Thailand, and plans to launch it in Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Russia in early 2005.

According to the article “… the software offers fewer features for a lower price and is designed to appeal to first-time computer users. Microsoft isn’t selling the software separately from PCs, nor disclosing how much it is charging computer makers for including it with their models. The company expects the PCs with the slimmed-down Windows to be priced as low as $300, hundreds of dollars less than low-end PCs equipped with Windows sell for in the U.S.”

If Microsoft had invested the energy in truly understanding how developing markets operate, it would have released Microsoft Lite five years ago, well before Linux ever became a threat. The question now becomes — is Microsoft Lite full-featured enough to compete with Linux? I still believe that $300 is too expensive to be successful in most developing markets.

However, to Microsoft’s credit, it does have a mobile OS that could end up being the real success story in these markets. It won’t provide the type of per-unit revenue that Microsoft is accustomed to, but volume could easily make up the difference.

Because a growing number of programmers in India and Bangladesh want software in their native tongue. And, more important, because Microsoft has so far largely ignored this market.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Javed Tapia, Director Red Hat India said “India’s domestic software industry resembles the TV industry around nine years ago when the programming was only in Hindi or English. Similarly, today computers are predominantly used only in English.” Over 90mn Indians speak Bengali language. He added, “Given that only a small percentage of our population communicates in English, it is imperative that software is available in Bengali and other local languages. The Red Hat Bangla desktop will definitely play a significant role in ensuring that benefits of the IT revolution are realized by millions of Bengalis,” he said.

The Bangla Linux desktop has the potential to change how education and e-government work. In education, teaching school children will be easier through computer user interfaces that are in Bengali. In e-Government, the use of Bangla Linux will enable users to access and/or create information in their own language. Citizens can access Government services in Bengali. Localization also expands business opportunities of Independent Software Vendors developing applications for education, e-Governance, Rural Banking, Community Information Centers (CICs) etc.

This is a major milestone in Red Hat’s long-term strategy for India. In addition to Bangla, Red Hat is working on localization of other Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi and Tamil. All these will be available as a part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 in February 2005.

I’m critical of Microsoft because the company has largely ignored countries like Bangladesh for years. Microsoft has been so consumed with software piracy that it figures any localization investment is a waste of money. And since they don’t provide software at a price that most consumers in these poorer markets can afford, they create a self-fulfillling prophecy. But then along comes Linux, a boom in outsourced software development, and, suddenly Microsoft is on the outside looking in.

According to this article Microsoft is now working on a Bangla OS, to be released in a year.

There is now an OpenOffice software package available in Swahili. According to the release:

Swahili is the most spoken of the Bantu languages and conservative estimates indicate that is the first language spoken by more than 70 million people, chiefly in Kenya, Tanzania, Congo (Kinshasa), and Uganda.

I do not expect a Microsoft Office Swahili anytime soon.

Microsoft has the funds to localize its office suite into every human language and still have a few billion in change. But it chooses to focus only on those markets where it can make a big profit. It has no interest in “break even” markets.

Microsoft offers 47 languages the last I checked, a number that has increased only marginally over the past few years. Meanwhile, OpenOffice offers more than 30 localized versions with another 30 or so in the works.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Every culture that Microsoft ignores today is a culture that it will lose tomorrow.

PS: Here’s an earlier related Microsoft rant.

Just four stores were live in September. Talk about rapid globalization.A Japan iTunes store is in the works, but that country won’t be as simple as Canada. Character set challenges are never easy, particularly when it comes to text input, output and search engines. Nevertheless, Apple is going at a blistering pace and I won’t be surprised if I see 30 stores by the end of 2005.

Its name comes from the Web-based machine translation software, Babel Fish.

Click here to search on “Web globalization” in English and Chinese.

This could be a handy tool for testing Google adwords in other markets. Apart from that, I’m not sure how I’d use it just yet, at least not until I improve on my Spanish.

I can’t imagine Google will look too kindly at its design:

As I reported a few weeks agoiTunes is already localized for 12 European markets. Japan, however, will not be quite so simple due to the inevitable character set challenges.

Also, here are my initial thoughts of how effectively Apple is localizing each store.

My how time flies. The last I checked the iTunes Music Store now supports 12 markets outside the US. Not too shabby.