Common Sense Advisory

Where will business globalization be in a dozen years? This report ambitiously looks at the world which business globalization and its enabling practices of translation and localization will occupy in 2020.

Every few years machine translation seems to be all the rage. Today, there's more reason than ever to feel good about automated translation -- the technology itself, the massive volume of information that needs to be translated, and consumer acceptance are all aligned. However, we keep finding that the revenue generated by MT software producers lags the market buzz. Where is the disconnect?

This Quick Take presents two tables from our September 2007 report, "On the Web, Some Countries Matter More than Others." The first table lists the top 25 markets by GDP, the second the 10 mega-languages with the most speakers in the world.

For this report, we looked at 505 websites representing the largest companies and most popular sites in each of the world's top 15 economies. We revisited the age-old question of improving the customer experience, testing the minimum content and functions needed to satisfy online browsers, buyers, and help-seekers across seven distinct "customer experience levels."

A few questions always cause endless conversations when companies plan their website globalization projects. "Which countries should we support? In which order?" lead the list. This report addresses the issue of which nations or languages provide the most likely return on investment -- and which you can safely skip.

It may seem trite to say, but finding a partner to handle your language needs and working with them is much like finding a life partner. Once you find what you think is the right one, you have to verify compatibility and work out the details of a long-term relationship. You must also deal with conflict, the occasional interloper, and other exigencies as they occur. Learn the best practices of the masters by reading this report.

Common Sense Advisory believes that the language industry is poised for more consolidation driven by the quest for more market efficiency, better technology, rationalized offerings, and global scale. At the same time, we see it continuing to be a very fragmented industry. This report explains this fundamental paradox of why the industry must consolidate but how consolidation will not change much.

Many companies in North America and Western Europe have considered outsourcing their information technology, business process, or language service to providers in lower wage countries. If they haven't already done so, they will soon. This report focuses on offshoring IT and language services to China.

This report presents more data gathered for our salary survey, "Wages of Localization." Here we offer additional analysis and commentary on salary ranges by position and region and overall job satisfaction by position and region.

This report lays out an online strategy for companies, associations, and non-governmental organizations considering a more active outreach to this growing population segment. It complements two other reports, “Reaching America’s e-Latinos – Otra Vez” and “When Translation Is the Law” (May07), that deal with e- responses to foreign-language inquiries and government agencies, respectively.

Most American retailers tend to ignore minority, ethnic, or multicultural market segments. We report on an exercise in which we contacted 102 internet retailers by webform and e-mail, in English and Spanish. Less than half answered all our inquiries in English, even fewer replied to the Spanish.

In this report, we examine what entices a company that needs something translated to buy that service from one supplier rather than another. With over US$10 billion at stake in a famously disaggregated market, can savvy or nimble service providers increase their share by playing arbitrage on the gap between customer needs and what their competitors offer today?

Most city, state, and federal government agencies offer English-only communications. Federal laws, court rulings, and executive orders mandate that the government not discriminate on the basis of language. This report outlines the issues for government agencies in the United States and Europe and offers some best practices on how to accomplish this task.

Here we list the top 20 firms worldwide that provide language services -- translation, localization, over-the-phone interpretation.

In this report we analyze the results of a multilingual global survey that yielded responses from 45 countries. In 27 graphs and 3 tables, the report paints a picture of the labor pool in language-related activities both on the buyer and the vendor side.

Many marketing managers still assume that potential buyers of their upscale product or service "probably speak English." Others assume that simple translation is enough, neglecting the deep infrastructure of currency support, country-specific business logic, and internationalized fields in forms for capturing data -- all critical elements that online transactions require.

We decided that the best way to end the debate was to ask consumers what matters most to them when they buy online. In this white paper we present the results of our survey of consumers in eight countries. We focused on their preferences for buying in English or in their own language, having products supported in local language or English, and what events or factors caused them to abandon websites.

We evaluated the features of 16 translation management systems against the criteria we established for this market sector in Translation Management Technology. This new report also presents relevant features and functionality in an easy-to-compare format for prospective buyers.

Cisco’s 2006 appointment of a CGO brought the concept of an executive guiding a multinational company’s international efforts back into the news. This report outlines the role of this C-level exec.

Test translations are one of the few ways an LSP can differentiate from the competition, yet they are often seen as a nuisance. Buyers seldom use this tool to its full potential. This report addresses the topic from both sides.

This report examines factors driving demand for translation management systems (TMS), defines four buyer types, maps system features to define meaningful subcategories, and outlines the adoption strategies available to enterprise buyers and language service providers.