1. Executing on a Multilingual Website Strategy
Boa tarde, eu sou Joseph Gomes, director geral da Viva Translations. Estou aqui para falar um bocadinho sobre o papel da lingua da difusao de Sites de Comercio Electronico. Para que eu nao acabe por massacrar a lingua portuguesa, vou vos falar em ingles, a minha lingua nativa.
So, first I would like thank you for being here. I assume you have recognized that there is potential in building and executing on a e-commerce strategy, so I am here to show you, as much as is possible in 20 minutes or so, some of the steps you can take to execute on a multilingual website strategy, what you need to do to localize your site into one or more languages so as to increase the probability of achieving your overall e-commerce objectives.
Our agenda will be as follows,
Joseph Gomes

2. Agenda Why go multilingual? Translation vs. localization
Getting ready for localization
Summary
First, if you haven’t already realized the potential of exposing your site in multiple languages, I will touch on some statistics that will show you why it makes perfect sense to do so. I will then explain the differences between translation and localization because this understanding will have an impact on how you proceed. Then we will get to the meat of the presentation by highlighting some of the things you will need to do and avoid to implement a multilingual site. I will then quickly summarize to finish up.

3. Why Go Multilingual? Reach a larger audience
"There are approximately 172 million English speakers and 163 million non-English speakers online" (Global Reach)
"Online sales $350 billion in 2000, 3.14 trillion in 2004" (
"37 million Americans do not speak English at home" (US Department of Health)
Reaches a larger audience
Well, that is why you have opted to pursue an e-commerce initiate, that is to reach a larger market, so some of the following statistics may not be a surprise to you. For example,
"There are approximately 172 million English speakers and 163 million non-English speakers online" (Global Reach)
Based on this research organization, the number of potential visitors totals over 300 million potential visitors, half of which are English.e Or according to others, the total reaches over 400 million.
$22.34 bln in online sales in Q4 2004
eMarketer announced it expects online retail sales to reach more than $22.34 billion in Q4, up 27.6% from Q In part, the jump from Q mark of more than $17.51 billion reflects consumers' increased broadband usage.
IDC: Where The eCommerce Dollars Are,
In billion, in trillion
US in 2000, 46% in 2004, 38% 17% decrease
WEU 20% 33% 65% increase
Japan % decrease
Asia % increase
ROW 7 7
Looking at the market potential from another perspective,
The International Data Corporation research shows that the number of worldwide mailboxes is expected to reach 1.2 billion in This is particularly relevant to those you who intend to incorporate opt-in campaigns in association with your e-commerce initiatives.
Now, here is an interesting statistic,
"37 million Americans do not speak English at home" (US Department of Health)
According to the US Department of Health,… I know, many of you may be thinking, well, why should I care. First of all, I just wanted to remind you that even if your target markets are found here in Portugal, there may be an opportunity for you, depending on your products and services and demographic targets, for multilingual commerce here in Portugal.
Let me ask you, how many foreigners were registered to live in Portugal? 250,000 in While it may be true that the majority are from Portuguese speaking countries, over 35% are from Europe and North America. And I strongly suspect that a very high majority of these are heaving internet users and fall within the medium to high wage earning bracket, although I don’t have data to support this.
And lastly, we have this one.
By 2007, Accenture predicts that the number one web language will be Chinese.
This stat always reminds me of a book called the The 22 immutable laws of marketing, where law number one was, It is more important to be first, than to be the best. You may agree or disagree, but the point here is that there is a HUGE market opening up and those who reach there first have a very good chance of being the leaders in their markets.

4. Why Go Multilingual? Reach a larger audience Increase your sales
"Site stickiness is doubled when a web site is translated - visitors stay for twice as long" (Forrester Research)
"Web users are up to four times more likely to purchase from a site that communicates in the customer's language" (
Increase your sales
Unless you are in business to provide free information, the idea is that you have something to sell. By having a multlingual e-commerce site you increase your probability of selling to an international market. But this is not only because you will be getting more visitors.Statistics show that visitors will stay longer and are more likely to now buy from you.
According to Forrester Research, visitors will stay twice as long if your site is translated into their language. This something we call Site Stickiness in English.
"Site stickiness is doubled when a web site is translated - visitors stay for twice as long" (Forrester Research)
More importantly, though, according to IDC.
"Web users are up to four times more likely to purchase from a site that communicates in the customer's language" (
In other words, if one of your potential customer’s is visiting your site in their language, you have an up to 400% better chance that they will buy from you. If that isn’t reason enough to go multilingual, then I don’t know what is.

5. Why Go Multilingual? Reach a larger audience Increase your sales
Strengthen your image
You are big
You have capacity
You are important
Strengthens your image
But wait, yes, there is one more reason, although one that is less direct and more soft. But still important.
That is, by having a multilingual site, you can portray a stronger image, for lack of a better word. A key concept in marketing, as you may know, is Perception is Reality. And in e-commerce the perception your visitor has of your site is everything. A mulilingual site helps you position yourself as someone who is big (they must be big if they are dealing in the international markets), capacity (well if they are that big, then they must have the capacity to serve me) and important, in that in the case that the visitor hasn’t heard of you, they will get the impression that they probably should have if you are dealing in international markets.

6. Translation vs. Localization
Internationalization
The process of designing an application, website, etc. so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.
So, you have now decided to market to one or more multilingual target markets. What do you need to know…well, before we get into that, let’s have a quick look at terminology to make sure we are on the same page when speaking of localization. So what is localization?
Localization is a direct result of Internationalization, which is,
The process of designing an application, website, etc. so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes.
What this means is that from a technical, functional and content perspective there are a series of considerations that you keep in mind to simply the creation of different language editions of your site.
I will touch on some of these in a few minutes.

7. Translation vs. Localization
Internationalization
Localization
The process of adapting and translating a software application, website, documentation, etc. into another language in order to make it linguistically and culturally appropriate for a particular local market.
Localization flows from Internationalization in that it is,
The process of adapting and translating a software application, website, documentation, etc. into another language in order to make it linguistically and culturally appropriate for a particular local market.
For example, marketing related content that must be customized in order to sound better in the target market
A L10N project usually includes the following activities:
translation of software
translation and desktop publishing of help and documentation
linguistic and functional testing of software and help/doc.
Localization may also involve customizing features in the application to country-specific standards, such as date/time formats, communication protocols, currency and financial data, or default paper sizes.

8. Translation vs. Localization
Internationalization
Localization
Translation
The process of converting written or displayed text to another language.
And translation is a component of localization, in that it is
The process of converting written or displayed text to another language.
For localization, translation is not enough. Localization implies more adaptation to the cultural differences/nuances and different locale considerations.
For example, a technical manual that must accurately reflect the source language and use internationally accepted terminology.

9. Getting Ready for Localization
Identify potential problems
Need to be complete
Expansion/contraction rate
Locale language issues
Locale issues
Now we are going to look at what you can do to prepare yourselves for a multilingual site by first looking at some potential problems that you can avoid. The extent to which these need to be considered depends on the design and complexity of the Web site.
The need to be complete – Once you have decided to localize your site into one or more languages, you must look beyond the html content of the site. You must also consider things like the support documentation that may be viewed or downloaded from your site, any applications that it may contain, for example financial simulators or flash applications, links, popups, error messages, other messages such as a Registration confirmation. Recently we passed a Microsoft subvendor test we were tested on all of these, which should show you the importance of being thorough in what needs to be localized
Expansion/contraction rate – This is a crucial condideration when preparing your site for localization. Depeding on the language, the resulting text can be 20% to 40% smaller (as in the case of going from Portuguese to English) or larger (as in the case of going from English or Portuguese into German. While the German text may have fewer words, the words themselves tend to be much longer). This is important because it will affect the sizes of certain components within your site, such field, table, text box, as well as frame and page sizes, number of pages. You have to therefore plan for this expansion or contraction rate when designing your site.
Eg. English: Single Point Data Entry differs from Summary Point Data Entry insofar as Summary Point allows you to specify a Number of Points and an SD. The Main Table will contain only one column for each Analyte for Single Point (for the mean value); there will be three columns (number of points, mean and SD) for Summary Point. You may select your mode in the QC Setup Tab.
Corresponding German: Die Eingabe von Einzelpunktdaten unterscheidet sich von der Eingabe der Zusammenfassungspunktdaten insoweit, als Sie bei Zusammenfassungspunkten eine Anzahl von Punkten und eine Standardabweichung angeben können. Die Haupttabelle enthält bei Einzelpunkteingabe nur eine Spalte für jeden Analyten (für den Mittelwert). Bei Zusamenfassungspunkten sind drei Spalten vorhanden (für die Anzahl von Punkten, Mittelwert und Standardabweichung). Sie können Ihren Modus in der Registerkarte QC Setup auswählen.
Locale language issues – The first decision, of course, is what languages are you going to localize into which depends on your target markets. But then you also have to decide what flavour of the intended language is most appropriate. For example, German for Germany will not be the same as for Switzerland. In the case of English, are you going to localize into American or British English, where in each of these two cases either references to American or British culture can be made to enhance the content of the site. Or maybe International English is more appropriate. This version of English tends to be more simple, uses less idioms and avoids culturally specific references.
Still within this a language context, think twice about using,
Words with multiple meanings, abbreviations and slang words and phrases
Also avoid mnemonics…we recently came across this when localizing Sovena’s site with Fula – Pura Gula, where finding an English word to rhyme with Fula was very challenging. Another thing to avoid is references to gender. For example the term “dona da casa” might not be applicable to certain cultures where both men and women take care of household duties.
In general, anything that portrays a way of life or culture specific to a country because this loses its relevance when localizing for different cultures.
Locale issues – There are also technical considerations that should be considered when designing your site. These include address/phone number/other number/date/time/currency and monetary related/formats, units of measure (not only in the text of the html but also in the fields that eventually will be filled in by the visitor), fonts (here cascading style sheets are best), communication protocols, currency (when localizing Unicer’s site, their history dated back to the days of “contos de reis” and contos…has to resolve how to translate this for Spanish and English, both from pure translation and also from exchange conversion perspective), exchange rate to apply and default paper sizes
Locale specific content
·                           Date formats (including calendar settings and day/month names)
·                           Time formats (12-hour vs. 24-hour clock etc.)
·                           Currency formats and other monetary-related information (taxes etc.)
·                           Number formats (decimal separator, thousand separator etc.)
·                           Fonts (names, sizes etc.)
·                           Address formats (postal codes, states etc.)
·                           Name formats
·                           Telephone number formats
·                           Units of measure
·                           Paper sizes

10. Getting Ready for Localization
Identify potential problems
Build a localization kit
Website content
Text files (XML, HTML, text, etc.)
Graphics in layered, editable format
Compiled, executable application
Un-compiled server-side files (JSP, ASP, PHP, etc.)
Back-end databases (SQL, Oracle, Access, etc.)
Build a localization kit or checklist
Why build a localization kit
Everyone in your team (software engineers, web designers, technical writers and product managers), responsible for your e-commerce site have important knowledge that can easily get lost in the transfer to your localization partner, or even between themselves.
A localization kit, which contains the project specific requirements and content, offers a relatively easy solution to this challenge. Basically, it provides information what needs to be done to what, how and by whom. The benefits of producing this localization kit up front include increasing the accuracy of the scheduling process, decreasing the time required from the client during the localization process and increasing the probability of accurate deliverables.
The list of items shown here is not a complete list, but will give you an idea of what to include in the localization kit. The complexity of the kit will of course depend on the complexity of your site, the number of target languages and how the responsibilities for each phase of the project will be distributed between you and your localization partner. For example, depending on who will be responsible for testing, desktop publishing, etc.
Website Content
Text files and message catalogs containing UI strings (XML, HTML, text, etc.)
Graphics in layered, editable format
Compiled, Executable application accessible via Internet
Uncompiled server-side files (Java, JSP, ASP, ColdFusion, PHP, etc.)
Back-end databases (SQL, Oracle, Access, etc.)

11. Getting Ready for Localization
Identify potential problems
Build a localization kit
Website content
Documentation
Hardcopy of all documents to be translated
Electronic files (Word, Framemaker, Quark, etc.)
Graphic source files (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.)
Unusual typefaces
Documentation
Hard-copy of all documents requiring translation (remember reference cards and box copy)
Electronic files for publishing application (FrameMaker, Word, QuarkXPress, InDesign, Interleaf, etc.,, but not solely Acrobat .pdf or PostScript files)
Graphics source files containing text (layered Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, etc.)
Unusual typefaces

12. Getting Ready for Localization
Identify potential problems
Build a localization kit
Website content
Documentation
Reference material

13. Getting Ready for Localization
Reference material
Glossaries (source or translated)
Product reference information
Previously translated files
Translation memory
Style guide
Information about target audience
Project schedule and responsibilities
Reference material
Glossaries of terms in source language
Translated glossaries
Product reference and overview information (though it may not be translated)
Files of previously-translated versions and source files for the same previous versions
Translation memory which can be leveraged for this project
Style guide which addresses writing and design issues
Information about target audience
Desired project schedule and final delivery date
Decision about approach for dealing with text expansion (often text is up to 30% longer when translated)
Word counts for all components
Engineering and publishing contacts to whom Viva should address questions
Summary of engineering expectations,including Viva's involvement in build process
Summary of testing expectations, detailing if Viva should do localization, internationalization, compatibility, and/or functionality testing

14. Getting Ready for Localization
Identify potential problems
Build a localization kit
Choose the right partner for you
Mother tongue, specialized professionals
Quality assurance standards
Use the latest localization technology
Choose the right partner for you
I am not going to pretend that the following criteria are those that Viva Translations holds true, but I feel strongly that which ever partner you eventually choose should have at least the following criteria,
Mother-tongue, professional, specialized translators
Quality assurance standards
Use latest technology – HTML editors that allow the localizer to view translated HTML file as he/she works - TM (maybe explain the differences between TM and MT), high speed Internet connections and FTP sites for example

15. Conclusion Go multilingual Prepare yourself for success
For more information…

16. For more information… Joseph Gomes +351 218 473 134