Localization and Globalization

The idea of localizing a website to a particular locale means nothing more than adapting the site to the specific circumstances of a given target usership that happens to be in a linguistically and/or culturally different market. By customizing a site to the specific needs of the users in a foreign market the website provider greatly increases his/her chances of establishing a beneficial relationship in that new market. The localization of a site poses a number of problems ranging from technical, to commercial, to legal, to cultural, and finally to linguistic.

Mesh has experience creating sites for a number of markets in a multitude of languages including French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic and many more. This experience makes Mesh your ideal partner for your localization project.

Read the following articles on web globalization that were created with the collaboration of Mesh:

• Web Globalization--Why you should consider a multilingual web presence (InfoSuisse)
  
• Businesses Getting Worldly on the Web (Globe and Mail)
• The Case for Globalization: Reasons for a Multilingual Web Presence (eBiz Toronto)
  

From a bsuiness point of view, the main goal of a website globalization project is the acceleration of the turn around time needed to update a company's digital content consistently across all languages and markets. From a technology point of view this means centralized management of the globalization processes and execution of the localization tasks in the respective markets. This, in turn, results in reduced translation costs and quicker time-to-market. From a technology perspective, this includes a Content Management System, which monitors all digital content and a computerized translation tool supported by the organization's translation memory. Workflow and project management tools on the central server ensure that the process moves forward in a timely fashion.

Globalization of your web presence is a must if you deal with several linguistic markets and will generate almost immediate return on investment.

The following items are key to Mesh Innovations' globalization services:

• Not all markets and languages can be handled identically on the Internet. Not every web user has a strong enough command of the English language to perform transactions online. It is therefore important that you adapt your website to local needs in the markets that you intend to do business. This means that sometimes you cannot simply translate your content into another language; you may in fact need to re-write some of it. Mesh will help you determine what kind of adaptation is required.
  
• Expand the reach of your business's online presence by making your website and web applications truly global. You can manage all your global sites centrally, but perform the localization directly in the respective markets. This will result in quicker turnaround and higher quality of the localized content.
• Many organizations already have multilingual sites. However, their sites do not always address the individual markets adequately (e.g. cultural, legal and commercial issues).
• The process of globalizing your Internet presence will not only leave your organization better equipped to respond efficiently to the various linguistic, cultural and national markets that you are present in, but will also improve your bottom line by incurring significant savings through improved processes.
• A typical globalization enterprise architecture includes a Content Management System, workflow and project-management tools, web and application servers, as well as computer-aided translation tools.