Global by Design

Multilingual Computing has published a “Guide to the Spanish Speaking World.” It includes an article from yours truly on Web localization for the US Hispanic market; in the article I profile Southwest Airlines, which recently launched a fully featured Spanish-language flight reservation engine. Additional articles talk about the variations of Spanish around the world as [...]

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Cox Communications announced yesterday that it is rolling out Spanish-langauge bills in selected markets. Here is the press release. 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 [...]

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Since relocating to San Diego, I’ve been a regular at Lowe’s. During my last visit I was asked to particpate in an online study. 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 [...]

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The statistics are compelling. According to the US Census Bureau, there are nearly 40 million native Spanish speakers in the US. By 2010, this number will easily surpass 50 million. 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 [...]

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Amy Campbell alerted us to The Modern Language Association Language Map. It’s an interactive tool for analyzing language speakers in the US by county and ZIP code, based on the 2000 census. Here is an excerpt of Spanish speakers in California: Did you know that more than 350 languages were reported in the 2000 census?

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