Target the World - The Importance and Techniques of Website Internationalisation

Posted by admin on 25 January 2010

Tags: technical, website design

As we find ourselves in the midst of a worldwide economic recession the likes of which have not been seen for generations, it is more important than ever to reach as many customers as possible in the most cost efficient manner.  While English has to date been the de facto language of the internet, the growth of the internet in second and third world countries, as well as the increasing importance of emerging economies, businesses can no longer afford to cater to just English speaking customers. This article discusses a few simple strategies that web site owners can employ to allow their web sites to utilize multiple languages and character sets.  

Of course, there is no reason to employ internationalisation techniques if you do not have content in the targeted language.  One mistake that companies often make is to use software packages to translated content.  This is almost always a bad idea since computerized human language translation is still in its infancy and the result is often unreadable.  Therefore, it is necessary to employ the services of a human translator to create the content.

While this article is not intended to be technical in nature, it is important to provide a brief explanation of how, once you have your translation(s), to choose which version to serve to site visitors.  Modern web browsing software allows users to specify their preferred language.  There is a section in the HTTP header called HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE that the browser sends with every request that indicates the preferred language.  The web server reads this header and responds appropriately.  How the content is served varies depending on the web serving software used.

The emergence of China as a powerful player on the international scene means that many companies are choosing to offer Chinese content.  This presents a unique challenge to website designers since the Chinese character set is not encodable via the single byte ASCII character set.  Fortunately, all modern web browsers now allow the use of Unicode, which is a character set that uses two bytes to specify the character.  Unicode has enough bandwidth to specify not only the Chinese characters, but all the characters of virtually any language in common use.

One thing to keep in mind - modern web 2.0 design often uses images for buttons and link markers.  Often, these buttons are overlooked when creating website translation.  Even if the translated content of the website is perfect, it is all for nothing if the user is unable to properly navigate and browse the site.

In these economic times, it is vitally important to reach out to customers all over the world.  No longer is it sufficient to have a web site with English only content.  Even for businesses that are not international in scope, the increasing multiculturalism of western society requires businesses to reach out to customers who speak a number of native tongues.