Here’s an article excerpt…

Hispanics accounted for half the U.S. population growth from July 2003 to July 2004 and numbered 41.3 million, about 14 percent of the population, as of July 1, 2004.

The U.S. population is about 296.3 million. Population growth from July 1, 2003, to July 1, 2004, was 2.9 million, the Census Bureau said, with half of that coming from Hispanics.

Over that period, the Hispanic growth rate was 3.6 percent compared with a growth rate of 1.0 percent for the population as a whole, the bureau said.

Given these statistics, it’s little wonder that US companies are aggressively launching Spanish-language Web sites. I’ve compiled a growing list of these Web sites here.

If you have any to add, please email them to info@bytelevel.com

The report I just completed on Web globalization would seem to support this trend. In 2003, we looked at language use on the Web sites of 121 major multinationals. French Canadian finished 7th overall. In our latest report, we studied 200 Web sites and French Canadian finished 12th overall. Of course, behind this drop were up-and-coming languages like Chinese and Korean.

Still, you have to wonder about the future of a language when the government requires people to speak it.

Conversely, there are groups within the US who want to force federal and state governments not to support Spanish.

Recently, Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentina (BBVA) purchased Laredo National Bank, a regional bank based in Texas.

This may seem like a relatively minor development, but it is anything but minor. Spanish banks see an opportunity to grow in the US through the booming Hispanic market. As BBVA noted in its press release: “Step by step, we are firmly moving forward into the US Hispanic market.”

US banks are also on an acquisition spree. Citigroup has purchased First American Bank, based in Bryan, Texas. And Wells Fargo announced plans to purchase First Community Capital, based in Houston, Texas.

A key to succeeding in the Hispanic market is focusing on remitances – money transfers between the US and foreign markets. According to a New York Times article, more than $13.4 billion flowed into Mexico from the US in 2003. This is big business. And banks are getting more creative in how they serve their customers. For example, Hispanic customers can now pay the mortgage of a family member based in Mexico without having to send money across the border. This saves the customer money and trouble and helps the bank increase customer revenue. Citigroup also has launched a binational credit card that can be paid off on either side of the border.

Growth prospects in the Hispanic market are bright. BBVA said that while 95% of people in the general US population have a checking account, only 65% in the Hispanic market have one.

As banks target the Hispanic market, there will be plenty of growth in terms of Web localization. I reviewed more than a dozen Texas and California banks and only found one that offered Spanish content: Laredo National Bank. And Web localization is just the most obvious opportunity for translation agencies; banks will also find they need to translate signage, loan application forms, advertising collateral and even human resources materials.

For a list of companies that currently offer Web sites for the US Hispanic market, we now offer a rapidly growing directory.

Additional articles talk about the variations of Spanish around the world as well as in-depth information on Spanish in the US market. Overalll, it’s a great resource and best of all, it’s free.

You can download the report here.

I found an interesting new term in the release: transcreating. This is just another term for localization, and I’m not sure I like it any better. But its use does underscore the limitations of terms like localization and internationalization. Here is the quote:

Cruz noted that Cox is the first major cable company to offer customers a “bundled bill” in Spanish, meaning that the new billing feature is available with not only Cox Cable, but also Cox Digital Telephone and Cox High Speed Internet. As with Cox’s current billing options, customers of multiple Cox services who choose the new Spanish-language bill can elect to receive a single bill or separate bills for each service. “Certainly, there is much more to offering a billing statement in Spanish than simply translating the existing bill. We took great care in ‘transcreating’ our statement to ensure that every section is clear, understandable and culturally relevant to our Spanish-speaking customers,” Cruz noted. “We also looked carefully at our customer service functions to ensure we offer excellent customer care at all levels of contact. This includes having customer service representatives who speak Spanish. We’ve also enhanced our web site, http://www.cox.com , to allow customers to view their Spanish- language bills and access other online customer support features in Spanish.”

When Cox launches the Spanish support pages for the San Diego market, I’ll provide more detail. However, if all they’re doing is adding a language preference option on the customer’s account information page, I doubt that this will be enough to ensure widespread usage. Cox needs to launch a full-scale Spanish Web site. Perhaps support is the first step.

As a side note, in our recent report we found that marketing initiatives tend to be what drive Web localization, not support initiatives. Cox appears to be an exception to that trend.

I went home, plugged in the URL and here’s what I found:

A bilingual marketing research study. I’m glad to see it. Coincidentally, I pitted the Spanish Web sites of Lowe’s and Home Depot against one another in our recent report, Web Globalization and the World’s Largest Companies.

The Lowe’s Web site did quite well, but there is plenty of room for improvement. This market research study is a sign, to me at least, that Lowe’s is just getting started with its online Spanish marketing efforts.

So it’s no surprise that American-based companies and organizations are responding to this trend with Spanish-language Web sites. I’ve commented on a number of these Web sites over the years, and I’m now collecting these Web sites in one place.

So here it is: www.bytelevel.com/global/es

The collection is small at the moment, but with your help I expect it to grow. Please take a look and let me know if there are any Web sites worth adding. I want this directory to be an ongoing resource for documenting who’s offering Spanish content, as well as how successfully they’re doing so.

Did you know that more than 350 languages were reported in the 2000 census?

According to the report, the rate of growth is nearly three times the overall national rate over the past decade and will propel the aggregate disposable income of the nation’s largest minority group to $699.78 billion in 2004.

It is called Mi Negocio (“my business”) and is located at www.ford.com/go/minegocio

Here are some juicy stats from Ford’s press release:

About 42 percent of all minority businesses are Hispanic-owned, which is more than any other minority group. Ranks of Hispanic entrepreneurship has jumped 30 percent since 1998, and one out of 10 small businesses will be Hispanic-owned by 2007 – jumping to two million from 1.2 million.*

Hispanics also are among the most Internet-savvy of consumers. There are about 13 million Hispanics online, and the average time Hispanics spend online outpaces that of the general U. S. population, according to a study completed earlier this year by America Online and Roper ASW. The study says nearly half of Hispanics who are now using the Internet went online for the first time within the past two years, and now spend about 9.5 hours a week online. More than half say that access to content in Spanish is important to them.

Mr. Huntington is not the first American to spout the equivalent of “there goes the neighborhood” in response to a wave of immigration. The mid- to late-18th century saw similar views expressed by similar alarmists. And I suspect the Native Americans said the same thing when those Anglo-Protestants first hit the beach.

I disagree with his argument on many levels. And I found his writing downright nasty at times; nevertheless, I believe the article is worth a read because the underlying argument is not likely to go away anytime soon.

Here’s an excerpt:

There are “more Latinos in the United States than there are Canadians in Canada,” Sosa said.

“We find that smart marketers are doing crossover work more and more because they are recognizing the influential role that Hispanics have,” said Manuel Machado of Miami-based Machado/Garcia-Serra Publicidad and president-elect of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies based in Virginia.

Kola Real, known formally as Industrias Ananos, is giving Coca-Cola a run for its money south of the U.S. border. Based out of Peru, Kola Real has succeed by creating a product a lot like Coca-Cola, but cheaper.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Kola Real is doing pretty well outside of Peru too. It now has 4% of the Mexican cola market – the number one market for Coca-Cola. And it is only just getting started.

Here’s an excerpt:

Coke and Pepsi once vied primarily with each other. Today both are fending off down-market alternatives — either so-called B-brands such as Kola Real or private-label drinks sold by Wal-Mart and other big retail chains. These cheaper rivals can cut into Coke and Pepsi’s profits and make it harder for them to raise prices to offset slowing sales.

The trend goes beyond Latin America. Big retailers in Germany, Great Britain and other European markets are selling more private-label cola, and B-brands are aggressive in Poland and Hungary.

One big reason: the switch to plastic. In the 1990s, plastic bottles largely replaced glass, offering a cheaper alternative that lowered newcomers’ cost of entry in the soft-drink industry. Plastic also allowed larger bottles that could be sold cheaply in supermarkets. Supermarkets provide an important outlet for new competitors because Coke and Pepsi often dominate smaller stores.

Kola Real’s strategy is simple: offer big sizes at low prices. In a Carrefour supermarket in Mexico City, a large display of Big Cola beckons shoppers with a price of about 75 cents for a 2.6-liter bottle. Nearby, bottles of Coke go for about $1.30 for a slightly smaller 2.5-liter bottle. On a recent day, housewife Lourdes Avila put four of the Big Cola bottles in her cart and said: “For that price, I’ll try it.”

In a few years we will see many more Kola-Reals take root and succeed against the major multinationals. Perhaps it is human nature (supporting a local company and an underdog) that helps fuel the success of these start-ups. And perhaps it’s just common sense to go with the cheaper brand of cola. Most likely it is a little of both.

Here’s an excerpt:

I guess you just “can’t beat the real thing.”

PS: Ironically, Coke, with more than 50 country Web sites, does not offer a site for Mexico.

I always find it interesting to observe how Web sites incorporate their first localized Web sites. They rarely revise their navigation menu to point to the new site; instead, they create a special button or graphic that points to the page. Navigation almost always comes later, and even then this “global gateway” does not become a major element until there are several localized sites involved.

As shown here, the Spanish site maintains the same layout:

I would have recommended pulling the text out of the graphics to save time in localization. Assuming that additional language-specific sites are created, the less “embedded text” you have, the less work the localization will be.

Still, I’m happy to see more organizations dedicating resources to Spanish localization. With 40 million native-language speakers in the U.S., it’s just a matter of time before most organizations follow suit.

One major problem with this new site — it’s near-impossible to find unless you already know the URL. Try visiting the main Walgreens home page: www.walgreens.com; as of today, there is no link to be found that will take you to the Spanish site. I suspect that link will appear shortly but the sooner the better; after all, I would bet that the people in charge of this new site are going to base its success partly on increased site traffic.

Here’s the press release.

Scholastic has no Spanish-language Web content just yet, but I would imagine the RFPs are out right now. It’s also unclear if the imprint will use include the tilde over the n. The press release left the tilde off of “Espanol.” Accented characters are just one of the challenges English-only speakers encounter as they begin working with different languages. For starters, it’s not clear how to even create these characters. To compound matters, URLs currently don’t support accented characters (though that will change).

Consider the CNN Spanish site. The URL is http://cnnenespanol.com while the page includes the tilde, as shown here:

Here is the site: www.nextel.com/espanol.

This is good first step. But Nextel still has a long way to go. In all, less than 20 Web pages (by my count) have yet to be translated, putting it well behind competitors Verizon Wireless and Cingular, who both offer a great deal more Spanish content. But Nextel is still ahead of Sprint PCS, currently without any Spanish-language site.

One a picky but important note, notice how the URL ends with “espanol” not “español.” URLs currently don’t support accented characters, though this should change over the next two years. Nextel would have made things easier for itself and its users if it simply used the “es” suffix. See www.hrblock.com/es. Of course, it could be worse. Bellsouth offers no link at all on its home page to its Spanish-language site: www.miportal.bellsouth.net. And Verizon Wireless uses this cryptic URL: http://espanol.vzwshop.com/gw/.

Overall, Nextel is off to a good start. Now when is Sprint PCS going to catch up?