Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has a clear
idea of how to boost the company's international expansion to key
markets. In the case of India and other large countries where
access to the Internet is not as widespread as in other, developed
countries, the idea was simple: let's give people...
Planet Web I18n
This page is no longer functional, and is only of historical interest. A number of links that no longer point to a valid resource have been unlinked.
The Planet Web I18n aggregates posts from various blogs that talk about Web internationalization (i18n). While it is hosted by the W3C Internationalization Activity, the content of the individual entries represent only the opinion of their respective authors and does not reflect the position of the Internationalization Activity.
July 14, 2016
July 13, 2016
W3C I18n Activity highlights
W3C HTML5 Validator enhanced with language detection functionality
The W3C HTML5 Validator has been enhanced with functionality that detects the overall language of a page. The validator can currently detect a little over 50 languages, but more will be added over time.
This makes it possible to compare the language of the content in
a page with language declarations, and issue warnings if the
lang attribute does not match the language of content,
if no lang attribute is given at all, or if a language
using a right-to-left script is detected but a dir
attribute is missing from the html tag.
For more information on the lang attribute, see the
Why use
the language attribute? article, or
Declaring the overall language of a page in the technique
index.
Internet Globalization News
South Koreans Have Found Their Pokémon Go Holy Land
It is not surprising that South-Korea, fourth
largest gaming market in the world, is also seeing a surge of this
phenomenon called Pokémon Go, a smartphone game that mixes a
classic title with virtual reality. I guess Sokcho's business will
do well, at least for a few weeks via
www.theguardian.com...
July 12, 2016
Internet Globalization News
Globalization: What the West can learn from Asia
Ijaz Nabi, the author of the article published
at the Brookings Institution website, brings up a very interesting
and important point: how Asian governments (with the exception of
Japan's) previously not really interested in the development of
their people, realized that investing in education and health was
the only way...
July 11, 2016
Internet Globalization News
Globalization for All? Or Just Connections?
This article brings up an interesting issue,
in my opinion. Is globalization truly "accessible" to everyone? Are
there really more trans-border business opportunities just because
small companies have Facebook fans who live in a different country?
Or, is it just that "connections" have been made easier? The
question is if...
Why Country Sites of International Companies are so Bad
The worst sites are usually not the truly
local sites designed by local businesses or government agencies.
Instead, the offenders often come from multinational corporations
(small and large) that create country sites with horrible usability
- and usually without a true understanding of the local market and
users. via www.nngroup.com...
Getting Cross-Cultural Teamwork Right
As someone who has worked with cross-cultural,
remotely based teams for many years, I think the insights provided
by Neeley are spot on. In order to have mutual understanding,
learning and teaching, team members must have a minimum level of
sensitivity and of self-awareness so they do not fall
into...
Does globalization mean we will become one culture?
Interesting approach to the impact of
globalization on cultures around the world. As expected, the
article does not really give an answer to the question if we will
become one culture. I would add that even though we might all buy
the same brands and use services provided by the...
The Challenges of Globalization and Democracy
Great analysis of some of the challenges and
tensions between democracy and globalization by Dani Rodrik , Rafiq
Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. While not always
globalization is necessarily against democracy or democratic
decision-making processes, there is a tendency,...
July 08, 2016
Global By Design
The one “flag” you should never use on your website
I visited the home page of the Chinese online
travel agency website Ctrip recently and came across this odd flag:
Just because the UK voted to separate from the EU doesn’t
mean that it’s considering a merger with the United
States (the last I checked). Seriously, I understand why
companies use this hybrid flag—as an all-purpose English … Continue reading "The one “flag” you should never use on your
website"
June 30, 2016
Global By Design
The Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation Agencies, now in Persian
Make no mistake. The proposed deal between
Boeing and Iran Air for 88 jets is a huge deal, not so much in
dollars but in symbolism. Because there are many more Western
companies lined up eager to strike similar deals in Iran. While
these deals are not without a fair share of risk, there was …
Continue reading "The Savvy Client’s Guide to Translation
Agencies, now in Persian"
June 28, 2016
ishida>>blog » i18n
Unicode Converter v8
An updated version of the Unicode Character Converter web app is now available. This app allows you to convert characters between various different formats and notations.
Significant changes include the following:
- It’s now possible to generate EcmaScript6 style escapes for supplementary characters in the JavaScript output field, eg. \u{10398} rather than \uD800\uDF98.
- In many cases, clicking on a checkbox option now applies the change straight away if there is content in the associated output field. (There are 4 output fields where this doesn’t happen because we aren’t dealing with escapes and there are problems with spaces and delimiters.)
- By default, the JavaScript output no longer escapes the ASCII characters that can be represented by \n, \r, \t, \’ and \”. A new checkbox is provided to force those transformations if needed. This should make the JS transform much more useful for general conversions.
- The code to transform to HTML/XML can now replace RLI, LRI, FSI and PDI if the Convert bidi controls to HTML markup option is set.
- The code to transform to HTML/XML can convert many more invisible or ambiguous characters to escapes if the Escape invisible characters option is set.
- UTF-16 code points are all at least 4 digits long.
- Fixed a bug related to U+00A0 when converting to HTML/XML.
- The order of the output fields was changed, and various small improvements were made to the user interface.
- Revamped and updated the notes
Many thanks to the people who wrote in with suggestions.
June 24, 2016
Global By Design
.uk says goodbye to .eu
Looks like it’s time I update my European
Union map, removing a key country code: Brexit
underscores a point I’ve made over the years — that country
codes are more relevant to users than regional domains, namely .eu.
A number of companies use .eu to support regional
websites, but Brexit illustrates the inherent risks. A
safer approach is to register country codes … Continue reading ".uk says goodbye to .eu"
June 21, 2016
ishida>>blog » i18n
UniView 9.0.0 available
UniView now supports Unicode version 9, which is being released today, including all changes made during the beta period. (As before, images are not available for the Tangut additions, but the character information is available.)
This version of UniView also introduces a new filter feature. Below each block or range of characters is a set of links that allows you to quickly highlight characters with the property letter, mark, number, punctuation, or symbol. For more fine-grained property distinctions, see the Filter panel.
In addition, for some blocks there are other links available that reflect tags assigned to characters. This tagging is far from exhaustive! For instance, clicking on sanskrit will not show all characters used in Sanskrit.
The tags are just intended to be an aid to help you find certain characters quickly by exposing words that appear in the character descriptions or block subsection titles. For example, if you want to find the Bengali currency symbol while viewing the Bengali block, click on currency and all other characters but those related to currency will be dimmed.
(Since the highlight function is used for this, don’t forget that, if you happen to highlight a useful subset of characters and want to work with just those, you can use the Make list from highlights command, or click on the upwards pointing arrow icon below the text area to move those characters into the text area.)
June 17, 2016
W3C I18n Activity highlights
For review: Time & date, Essential concepts
A draft of a new article, Time & date, Essential concepts is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by 22 June.
This article introduces a number of basic concepts needed to understand other articles that deal with time zones and handling of dates and times on the Web.
Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on the link “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)
Note that some links don’t work because this is in a test location. No need to report those.
June 13, 2016
W3C I18n Activity highlights
New article: Ruby markup
Ruby is the name given to the small annotations in Japanese and Chinese content that are rendered alongside base text, usually to provide phonetic information, but sometimes to provide other information.
This article discusses how to use HTML5 markup for ruby text. It covers what works and what is still aspirational pending more widespread browser support.
The aim of markup is principally to establish the relationships between the base text and the ruby text (the annotations). Information about how to then apply adjustments to the default styling of ruby text which be covered by Ruby Styling, which is still in development.
June 07, 2016
Global By Design
Google Translate: Ten Years Later
I remember when Google Translate went
live. Hard to believe it was 10 years ago. I remember thinking that
this relatively new technology, known as Statistical Machine
Translation (SMT), was going to change everything. At the
time, many within the translation community were dismissive of
Google Translate. Some viewed it as a passing phase. Very
few people said that machine translation would … Continue reading "Google Translate: Ten Years Later"
May 31, 2016
Global By Design
Q&A with SYSTRAN about its new cloud-based machine translation platform
It has been a decade since Google Translate
took machine translation to the masses — a topic for a future post.
But most companies will not be using Google Translate anytime soon
to power their machine translation efforts. They want more control
over customizing the engine, leveraging existing translation
memories, and other capabilities that Google doesn’t … Continue reading "Q&A with SYSTRAN about its new
cloud-based machine translation platform"
May 26, 2016
W3C I18n Activity highlights
Updated article: Changing an HTML page to Unicode
The article was edited to make it easier for non-experts to follow. An example of an encoding declaration was added, and a form to check for HTTP headers, but most of the text was also reworked.
See the updated article.
May 24, 2016
Global By Design
Last call for the Website Globalization in Life Sciences webinar
I’ll be presenting tomorrow (May 25) at 1pm
EDT on web globalization leaders in life sciences, including best
practices and trends. You can register here.
May 20, 2016
W3C I18n Activity highlights
Publication of the final OntoLex specification: lexicon model for ontologies (lemon)
The OntoLex community
group is proud to announce the publication of the final
specification of lemon, the lexicon model for
ontologies. The aim of lemon is to provide rich
linguistic grounding for ontologies, including the
representation of morphological and syntactic properties of
lexical entries and the meaning of these lexical
entries with respect to an ontology or vocabulary. Lemon
allows to publish lexica or terminological data on the web as
linked data.
May 18, 2016
Global By Design
What do you get for the billionaire who has everything? How about a vanity TLD?
I love this story in CircleID about how the
Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li has registered the generic
top-level domain .richardli. I have no idea what he paid but the
going rate on the application is around $100,000. The
official explanation for this purchase is to “protect
intellectual property.” But I’d say owning one can be a heck …
Continue reading "What do you get for the billionaire who has
everything? How about a vanity TLD?"
May 16, 2016
Global By Design
Now you can register the Korean equivalent of .com: 닷컴
Earlier this year Verisign, the registry
that manages the .com and .net domains, began rolling out the
localized Japanese equivalent of .com: .コム. Today, Verisign
adds another language to the mix, with the rollout of the Korean
versions of both .com (.닷컴 ) and .net (.닷넷). This is sunrise period
of registration, which is limited to trademark … Continue reading "Now you can register the Korean equivalent of
.com: 닷컴"
May 09, 2016
Global By Design
Web Globalization Leaders in Life Sciences
As life sciences companies broaden their
global sights to include new and emerging markets, their global
(and mobile) websites have not always kept pace. SDL recently
commissioned a report in which I benchmarked a select group of 25
life sciences websites: Abbott Abbvie Amgen Astra Zeneca Baxter
Bayer Beckman Coulter Becton Dickinson Boston Scientific
Bristol-Myers … Continue reading "Web Globalization Leaders in Life
Sciences"
May 04, 2016
Global By Design
Adobe: The best global consumer technology website of 2016
For the 2016 Web Globalization Report Card, we
studied the following 15 consumer technology websites: Adobe
Apple Canon Dell HP HTC Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Panasonic Samsung
Sony Toshiba Xiaomi The consumer technology sector includes many of
the most globally successful companies. So it’s no surprise that
the top four companies are also in the top … Continue reading "Adobe: The best global consumer technology
website of 2016"
May 03, 2016
W3C I18n Activity highlights
For review: Ruby Markup
A draft of a new article, Ruby Markup is out for wide review. We are looking for comments by 5 May.
The article describes how to mark up HTML for ruby support. (It will later be followed by a similar article describing how to style ruby.)
Please send any comments as github issues by clicking on the link “Leave a comment” at the bottom of the article. (This will add some useful information to your comment.)
April 25, 2016
Global By Design
American Express: The best global financial services website of 2016
For the 2016 Web Globalization Report Card, we
studied 9 financial services websites: Allianz American
Express Axa Citibank HSBC Marsh MasterCard Visa Western Union
American Express emerged on top with support for an impressive 41
languages; it most recently added Bosnian. Allianz finished in
second place in regards to languages. The AmEx home page, shown
here, … Continue reading "American Express: The best global financial
services website of 2016"
April 12, 2016
Global By Design
What’s the most multilingual website?
I often point to Wikipedia as one of the most
multilingual websites on the Internet. Which is a major reason
why Wikipedia finished in third place in the 2016 Web
Globalization Report Card. But Wikipedia is not the most
multilingual website. For that, I’d have to point toward the
Jehovah’s Witnesses website. As only partially illustrated
by the screen … Continue reading "What’s the most multilingual
website?"
April 04, 2016
Global By Design
You can now register the Japanese equivalent of .com: .コム
And so it begins. Verisign, the registrar
that manages .com domains, has begun its rollout of non-Latin .com
equivalents, beginning with Japanese: Now, if you don’t have a
Japanese domain name, slapping .コム to the end of your
company’s name probably doesn’t make much sense from
a branding perspective (though absolutely from an intellectual
property perspective). But more and more … Continue reading "You can now register the Japanese equivalent
of .com: .コム"
March 30, 2016
W3C I18n Activity highlights
Unicode Conference speaker submission deadline 4 April
For twenty-five years the Internationalization & Unicode® Conference (IUC) has been the preeminent event highlighting the latest innovations and best practices of global and multilingual software providers. The 40th conference will be held this year on November 1-3, 2016 in Santa Clara, California.
The deadline for speaker submissions is Monday, 4 April, so don’t forget to send in an abstract if you want to speak at the conference.
The Program Committee will notify authors by Friday, May 13, 2016. Final presentation materials will be required from selected presenters by Friday, July 22, 2016.
Tutorial Presenters receive complimentary conference registration, and two nights lodging, while Session Presenters receive a fifty percent conference discount and two nights lodging.