As international Internet access grows and more companies and institutions around the world put their information online, the worldwide population will want to conduct more language specific e-business. In the next few years Asian and European e-commerce growth will more than double US expansion. The research also shows that the vast majority of people prefer using websites in their native language, especially for leisure activities such as online shopping. Moreover, they are more likely to buy things online if they can use their own language. Companies of any size wanting to leverage the Internet to reach global markets need to offer versions of their websites in each of their target market languages.
Translation is just the starting point.
The challenge of maintaining a multilingual web site by updating all the translated pages is significant. Once a web site 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. Each of these needs to be dealt with in that language, this could require a large linguistically and technically skilled staff. Broadbase handles as many queries as possible without human intervention. Links from Spanish pages should always lead to other Spanish pages.