Companies of any size wanting to leverage the internet to reach global markets, therefore, need to offer versions of their websites in each of the languages of their target markets. But Mr McClure says there is little response from those he has questioned in the US and Europe regarding their plans to make their sites multilingual. Europe, he notes, has natural advantages over the US, since it has local linguistic skills and inherent cultural diversity. But there is little evidence that European businesses are turning this lead to their advantage. This may be because the problems of maintaining a multilingual website are formidable.
Translation is just the starting point.
Automated translation is available for free to individual web surfers, who can use it to get rough translations. But the quality, although improving, often yields laughable results and is no good for companies wishing to post alternative-language versions of their websites. So web pages have to be translated manually, or else automated translations must be reworked and polished by skilled translators. Computers can play a valuable role in the overall translation process, providing, for example, online bilingual dictionaries, term banks and translation memories that scan databases of similar sentences that have been well-translated previously. Once a website is translated into a number of languages, the web's interactive nature invites customers to respond with sales queries and support issues in their own language.