Global by Design

Lionbridge announced today that it “is localizing the web site for The Well Project Inc., a not-for-profit corporation with a mission to change the course of the HIV/AIDS pandemic through a unique focus on women.”

The WelL Project launched its Spanish-language site today and more languages are on the horizon. While I would love to see [...]

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Just when I thought the dark days of US xenophobia couldn’t get any darker, I read that Utah has taken down its Spanish-language Web site.
According to the article, “”Two weeks ago, the state launched www.espanol.utah. gov, a Spanish-language companion to the state’s informational Web site The Spanish-language site offered 10 pages of information [...]

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First, here is a picture of the billboard in question:

According to the WSJ, VW was using this billboard to pitch its new GTI to young, bilingual Hispanics. But it appears that the billboard got a little too much attention. Says the article, VW quickly took the billboards down in three cities after they quickly generated [...]

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The Spanish-language edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is due out next week. Now this begs the question: Which Spanish is it being translated into? According to the press release:

As with the five preceding Potter books, the Spanish-language publisher,
Ediciones Salamandra, will publish three different versions of the same
translation, which reflect the idiomatic differences [...]

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According to a recent study by Feedback Research of online consumers who lived in the US, spoke Spanish at home and/or used Spanish media regularly:

69% of Spanish-speakers who shop online preferred Spanish language sites when shopping or gathering information about products/services online.
49% of Spanish-speaking respondents who shop online stated that they were more likely to [...]

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Pacific Gas & Electric Company has launched a Spanish-language site for the US market. Here’s the press release
The Spanish site is parked at www.pge.com/espanol. But PG&E wisely also redirects from the URL: www.pge.com/es.
Also important, the English PG&E site provides a prominent link to the Spanish site, nicely positioned in the global gateway “sweet spot.”

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A new study by the Roslow Research Group on behalf of Hispanic U.S.A. “challenges the assumption that the use of Spanish will decrease in coming years as succeeding generations of Hispanics are born and grow up in this country.”
Key findings include:
By 2025, the number of Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States will reach 40.2 [...]

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According to Bloomberg, the US Hispanic population is growing three times more quickly than the US population as a whole.
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 [...]

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According to this article, Quebec Premier Jean Charest has hinted that he might crack down on the spread of English in the workplace. Apparently French is losing its grip. albeit very slowly, in this Canadian Province.
The report I just completed on Web globalization would seem to support this trend. In 2003, we looked at [...]

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Up until recently, only a handful of US banks have served the Hispanic population reasonably well. But that’s all changed now that the Hispanic market is worth an estimated $700 million.
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 [...]

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