In an ideal world, computers wouldn't care what language humans use. After all, language to a computer is nothing more than an unpoetic string of zeros and ones. Machines can happily burble away to one another in binary-speak without misunderstanding. But if computers are to be useful to their creators, they must be taught to deal with the world's linguistic tower of Babel. Until recently, lessons have been incomplete.
Most commercial software is English-centric, written by Western programmers for Western users.
Only when software is exported is it modified for the local language, and once modified, it tends to lose its mother-tongue capabilities. For people who work in different languages and for companies with worldwide operations, this monolingual nature of software complicates life. Multinational companies must buy different versions of the same program to suit users in various countries, but that's a relatively minor headache. A larger problem arises when exchanging information and ideas internationally via networks. People using Chinese software can't access vital corporate data stored in English-speaking computers.