Emma Naismith, marketing director at Los Angeles-based Bowne Global Solutions, says prices need to be expressed in the local currency, dates must be in the right format, and weights and measures should be familiar. Colours and images may need to be altered as they can convey different implications or simply work better in some countries than in others. Black is seen as the sombre colour of mourning in many cultures, but white conveys the same in other countries. A thumbs-up or the showing of palms through a wave can have the opposite of the desired effect. Graphics may support slogans or captions that contain plays on words that make no sense after translation.
Culture can also influence the design and operations of a website.
In Japan, where people are uneasy about giving their credit card details over the web, internet sales processes have to be changed to enable customers to order online, and pick up their goods from a local store or collection point. There are also legal and taxation issues that need to be addressed to do business, including e-business, in different countries. A good multilingual website will need to be designed well so that, for example, links from Spanish pages always lead to other Spanish pages, these being logical, consistent and faithful translations of the original site. Some multilingual sites revert to a base language, usually English, when no translated page is available. This risks putting off customers.