<div align="justify"><p><b>The global e-market faces a universal challenge:</b> </p><p>companies must relate to customers in their own language and culture. </p><p>Only one in 20 people worldwide have English as their mother tongue, and we are at the point where English is no longer the dominant language of the internet. </p><p>This overturns the depressing predictions of the late 1990s, when the web-oracles had us believe that English would be the new web-Esperanto simply because it got there first, and every other language would be washed into the storm-drains of the monolingual superhighway. </p><p>Now, as computer usage expands internationally, local users want to work, surf, communicate, transact and play in their own languages, using websites, search tools and applications that reflect their culture. </p><p>A truly worldwide market awaits only those who embrace and master the 'localisation' that will facilitate this massive change in e-culture. </p><p>Many organisations are playing key roles in localising the web. Google's international profile is in no small part due to the availability of eighty-five different language interfaces, including 'tlhIngan' (earthling translation: 'Klingon'), the primary language spoken on the planet Kronos. </p><p>Unesco has always been at the forefront of promoting cultural pluralism and the protection of linguistic diversity, and the SIL International website lists no less than 6,800 main languages, cross-referenced to a staggering 48,000 dialects. </p><p>SIL is an organisation that has worked for more than 50 years to study, develop and promote the world's languages, in particular those that are less well known, and over the past five years it has also been very active in developing a range of software and language tools for web developers. </p><p>Also important in the process of localisation are the traditional translation agencies, which are now investing heavily and re-branding themselves as 'language management' companies. </p><p>Thebigword.com is one such, and last year was the first time it exhibited at the Online Information Exhibition in London. </p><p>Ian Harris, the company's creative technical director, was taken on two years ago as part of its re-tooling drive. </p><p>"The majority of traditional translation agencies continue to do what they've always done," he explained. "They co-ordinate a pool of freelance translators, and hence produce translations for clients. </p><p>"In the world of translating there's nothing wrong with this simple business model and it will continue to pay the mortgages of those involved. But the web has opened up a raft of opportunities." </p><p>Three years ago, Thebigword.com found that an increasing number of clients were grappling with the technical challenges of localising content, and decided to build up the necessary expertise to be able to offer a complete solution. </p><p>"Becoming a language management company requires a major investment in staff and equipment," said Harris. </p><p>"We're now a completely different kind of company to a few years ago. The people who do the translating haven't changed. They're still the freelance pool and this needs to be so because of the importance of subject specialisation and matching the language. </p><p>"But previously, Thebigword.com staff who were co-ordinating the freelance translators were linguists. Now, they're first and foremost computer-literate project managers, capable of dealing with technical client requests for proposals." </p><p>Three years ago, less than five per cent of Thebigword.com's business involved the web. Today, that figure is approaching 70 per cent - and all the company's work is web-enabled. </p><p>The file formats it uses - for example, XML and SGML - are now always designed for multiple deployment, whether this means book, CD or website. And this new strategy is paying off. </p><p>"Our turnover in 2001 was £4.5m and static," said Harris. "Turnover is now £7.8m and new projects are rolling in as fast as we can take them on." </p><p>He puts this huge change down to global companies realising that, if they want to sell into more countries, then they have no choice but to go multi-lingual. </p><p>"Before the web, companies could get away with being lazy when it came to translating," he explained. </p><p>"When prospects pick up a physical brochure they're committing themselves to reading it, even if it isn't in their native language. But with the web, immediacy is everything. If it's in a foreign language they'll go somewhere else." </p><p>Harris argues that there are plenty of studies to back this assertion. "First, you have to get people to visit your site," he said. "Prospects are at least five times more likely to start searching in their own language. </p><p>"You then have to keep them on your website for long enough to read your pitch. They are 70 per cent more likely to stay on a site if it is in their local language. </p><p>"Then finally you have to get them to buy. The likelihood of buying increases by at least 40 per cent if the web pages are localised, and we're not just talking about the language. </p><p>"It all adds up to one conclusion: if companies want to sell into a region then they need to do so in the right language." </p><p>Harris believes that English speakers tend to be arrogant, condescending and patronising. "I can say all this because I was like that three years ago," he admitted. </p><p>"The US is by far the worst for cross-cultural understanding, although the UK also suffers from a severe dose of island mentality when compared to our continental neighbours." </p><p>And information companies are among the worst offenders. "Most information companies still have sites in just one language and many still have their information stored as ASCII, making the search, retrieval and display of non-Roman character sets an impossibility," he pointed out. </p><p>"When it comes to localising their offerings, most companies in the sector haven't left first base yet." </p><p>One mistake companies make is to leave localising their website to the last minute. "They get their site up and running and then, a week before launch, they decide they need local languages. But, at that point, nobody has budgeted for it, planned it or understands it," warned Harris. </p><p>And if companies do plan their sites properly they can avoid potential cross-cultural misunderstandings. </p><p>"When people are selling online, then multiple currencies, date formats, units of measurement and so on, are issues that can easily be taken care of with a bit of planning," he explained. "Unfortunately, customers tend to try to struggle through those issues before they get to us." </p><p>Harris stresses the need to plan updates carefully. "Customers need to ensure that they're not translating things twice," he said. </p><p>"If they keep their native language up-to-date, then we can take care of the rest. For a major site in, let's say, three languages, the annual maintenance costs will only be 15 to 20 per cent of initial translation costs." </p><p>And because modern systems have in-built multilingual support there are very few translation challenges that haven't already been solved. </p><p>"On the whole, people only think that multilingual sites are problematic because they haven't yet tried to tackle them," said Harris. </p><p>And what of Esperanto? Developed in the late 19th century, Esperanto was the first and is still the best-known constructed language, still tempting us with the dream of a neutral communications medium that does not favour particular peoples or cultures, and therefore promotes equal rights, tolerance and true internationalism. </p><p>But, in spite of bursts of popularity during the course of the last century, and the estimated 15 million people living who have learnt at least some, Esperanto continues to bump along the bottom of the language barrel. In fact, you are so unlikely to meet a fellow speaker on your travels that it's virtually useless as a communications medium. </p><p>Esperanto is not the only constructed international language. Interlingua and Loglan also have supporters, and websites list 300 additional constructed languages, including the 15 middle-earth languages created by J R R Tolkein. </p><p>But will a neutral global language ever become reality? "In the early web years it really did look as if English was going to become the single global language, but the cultural backlash and freely available machine translation tools put paid to this, thank goodness," said Harris. </p><p>"I think we're now going to see an ever-increasing number of local languages being used on the web. </p><p>"Ten years ago, Thebigword.com worked in only 40 languages, compared to 135 today, including Lingala, Shona, Macedonian, Swahili, Kurdish and Somali. We can also do Esperanto, but we've never been asked." </p><p>And what about Klingon? "We did have to translate materials into Klingon for a Trekkies convention last year," said Harris. "Did you know that in percentage terms it's the fastest growing language in the entire solar system?" </p><p>The babelfish - as Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will tell you - is a translation device that also happens to be a small fish. </p><p>When slipped into the ear canal, it enables the wearer to understand the meaning behind the mutterings of any other life form in the entire universe. So how close are we getting to this ultimate goal? </p><p>"It will happen and when it does it will be fantastic," enthused Harris. "But it's still so far off that if you compare it with flying we haven't even got to the Wright brothers yet. </p><p>"The core technology behind machine translation is old. But my two year-old daughter has a better grasp of language than the best machine translator." </p><p>According to Harris we're still approaching machine translation from the wrong angle - the dictionary angle - although nobody knows yet what the right angle is. </p><p>"For a while we thought that neural networks and the associated learning processes would provide the key but I'm not so sure now," he explained. </p><p>"We're certainly keeping an eye on it, because the breakthrough will come. We're just not sure if it's three years away or 30. More computing power is not the answer - we've already got more than we know what to do with." </p><p>But Harris is not entirely negative about machine translators. "They're a very useful tool as long as you keep their limitations in mind," he explained. </p><p>"We use machine translation extensively but carefully at Thebigword.com: 70 per cent accurate means 30 per cent gibberish. Machine translators find it difficult to work out who's doing what and to whom; and heteronyms give them apoplexy." </p><p>I decided to try this out for myself. Using Alta Vista's Babelfish facility I translated the following from English into German, and then back into English: </p><p>'He said she saw the weirdest thing in the town-ship: a hand reaching up from a manhole wielding a threaded needle. It was the first time she had ever stumbled across a sewer in a sewer.' </p><p>The result did at least show that machine translators have a sense of humour: </p><p>'He said it saw the sonderbarste thing in city ship: a hand, which above exercises a shifted needle of an entering hole reached. It is, which had gestolpert first times it at all over a culvert in a culvert.'
Enough said.</p></div>