Twitter is the latest company to use crowdsourcing to localise their website and interface – about time they localised it too, as in the arena of social networking, Twitter has been lagging behind other sites such as Facebook when it comes to reaching a multilingual audience…
So what is crowdsourcing exactly?
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A recent article in New Scientist reports on the imminent release of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from U.S. national control. ICANN is responsible for maintaining the various technical standards that make the Internet possible on a low level.
Under an Affirmation agreement with the U.S. department of commerce ICANN will not be coordinated by any specific government, allowing representatives from many countries to take part. The likely offshoot is that Internet standards will become more inclusive of Internet users outside America. For instance, the article reports that we might reasonably expect domain names to be available in Chinese and Arabic characters in little more than a year. They also report that current browsers cannot access domain names written in these scripts, which is quite right, but a reasonably small change I cannot see any major browser manufacturer delaying in releasing to their customers.
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International eMarketing12th November, 13.00 – 17.00
The Source, Meadowhall, Sheffield (£35)
Learn about ebusiness strategies to promote your business in non-English markets using the Internet.
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The Web-Translations blog is part of The Daily Reviewer’s list of top 100 blogs!
The Daily Reviewer selects only the world’s top blogs, sifting through thousands of blogs daily to present the world’s best writers. The blogs that feature on the Daily Reviewer website are authoritative on their respective niche topics and are widely read. To be included in the Top 100 blogs list is a mark of excellence – for the full list of linguistic blogs, click here.
We are very proud to be recognised in this list – it’s great to know that so many people out there read and value what we’re writing.
Keep reading, and remember: we welcome your comments!
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Take your share of the global market
According to a recent EU report, 2 of the main obstacles faced by UK businesses who are exporting for the first time are language and cultural barriers, and how best to promote their websites using SEO and online advertising.
The first step in trading internationally is to localise your website. This way, you can gain enquiries and orders from overseas customers with only a small investment – with even just one or two pages translated into foreign languages you can use your website to “test the water” in a number of countries at once, and see which ones gain you the most web traffic.
By monitoring the visitors to your localised webpages, you can choose the countries which warrant extra investment and focus on marketing your product or service there.
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Top 10 Internet Languages
The latest data from Internet World Stats reveals that Italian has been knocked out of the Top 10 internet languages and replaced with Korean. English remains the most popular language of the Internet at 29% of all web content, with Chinese firmly in second place at 20%. But English has fallen significantly from its position in 2000, when it accounted for 68% of all internet users. Spanish, Chinese and Arabic continue to grow at a faster rate than English.
The remaining 8 top languages are all below 10%, with Arabic and Russian seeing the greatest growth since 2000. Perhaps predictably, as a percentage of language speakers who use the internet, Japan has the highest penetration wish a massive 75% of Japanese speakers accessing the web. German comes a close second with 68%, but the rest of the world has some way to go to catch up.
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Europeans are buying more online as confidence increases and companies deliver a better user experience.
As e-tailers prepare for another record Christmas period they should consider the changing trends in consumer confidence across Europe for new opportunities. Consumers are buying more frequently in every country in Europe, but as the pace of growth slows in the UK and competition stiffens, smart businesses will look to serve multilingual markets where consumerism grows faster and is less competitive.
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We did it! Thanks to your eager voting, we not only came in at no. 49 in the Top 100 Language Blogs overall this year, but also made it into the Top 10 Language Professionals blogs.
See the full list here: http://en.bab.la/news/top-100-language-blogs-2009.html
Thanks to everyone who voted for your support, and let’s look forward to climbing the chart even further next year!
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The .eu domain is exclusively for residents of the European union. It offers a single European identity on the Internet for 500 million Europeans in 27 different countries.
Why choose a.eu domain?
To show you are European – using a .eu domain states that you are located in Europe
Broaden your market – .eu domains widen your potential customer base. We at Web-Translations have found that just by localising a few key pages of our client’s websites, they gain significant traffic and enquiries. Imagine that extended across the whole of Europe!
Attract customers – a .eu website tells your customers that you are open for business within Europe – that’s 27 different countries. It also combines the traffic of all your separate country websites into one – all those visitors will come to a single website.
Streamline your website – creates one location or hub for all the information about your company, products and services that is relevant to EU customers. It can make managing your multilingual website much easier.
Increase the visibility of your website – .eu domains attract attention, and therefore traffic!
Create a good impression – be taken seriously as a global company
Leaves scope for future development – even if you only have one or two European languages on your website now, if you choose to add any more at a later date, these can be based on your .eu domain.
Many global companies have already taken advantage of this opportunity – Hyundai, Pioneer, Versace, Ricoh, Lexus and Estate Agents Century21, to name but a few.
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We at Web-Translations are proud to announce that we won the Wakefield First eBusiness award last night – in recognition of our work in pioneering new technology in the field of language services.
Web-Translations has always sought to bring innovation to the language services industry by making services easy for clients to buy and use – for any type of business.
Managing Director Daniel said ” We are so proud to win this award – it gives us invaluable recognition of the hard work we’ve been putting in to our latest technologies. The team have done a great job.”
For more information about our email and blog translation services, or to arrange a demo, please contact us at sales@web-translations.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1924 360460.
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