Around
the globe, English is the language of power: It’s the official tongue in
dozens of nations, from Australia to Zimbabwe. It’s spoken by millions of
people in more than 100 countries. Business and cultural elites everywhere can
manage at least a few words. It’s not surprising, then, that as the Internet
has revolutionized global commerce, English has become the lingua franca of the
World Wide Web.
But Achtung, baby. This Web is finally living up to its worldwide name. Just
four years ago, English was the native language of 80% of Web users, and nearly
all Netizens could read it to some degree. Today, English is the mother tongue
of less than half the people on the Net, says market researcher Global Reach
Inc. That means merchants had better not talk dollars to German-speaking
cybercitizens who think in Deutsche marks. Attenzione, Web merchants. This is no
passing phase. As the Net penetrates ever-deeper into non-Anglophone societies,
more users won’t know English. By 2004, only one-third of Web users will be
native English speakers, estimates Global Reach. In three years, Internet
spending outside the U.S. will top $914 billion, two-thirds of the world’s
$1.64 trillion in e-commerce, according to researcher International Data Corp (IDC).
Babel.net |
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Although English was the firstlanguage of 80% of Web users in 1996, today it’s the mother tongue of fewer than half. |
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Web user’s first language: |
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1996 |
2000 |
|
English |
80% |
49.90% |
Chinese |
1% |
7.60% |
Japanese |
4% |
7.20% |
German |
1% |
5.90% |
Spanish |
1% |
5% |
Smart Net companies such as Yahoo! Inc. and Amazon.com
are perking up their ears. Yahoo has sites in a dozen tongues, and Amazon hawks
books on Japanese-, French-, and German-language sites. But they’re the
exception. Despite growing multiculturalism online, 55% of U.S.-based Net
companies offer sites only in English, says IDC. Overseas firms are stepping
into the breach. From Asian financial source Boom.com to Central European
city-guide Globopolis.com, foreign-owned sites are creating pages in multiple
languages to reach their customers around the world. Companies reap big benefits
from going global. eBay Inc., for example, runs sites in Germany and France–dominating
those markets, selling twice as many goods as competitors do. And GongShee.com,
an online store for Chinese foods, launched an English-only site last spring,
but sales were sluggish. In September, it added Chinese descriptions, and orders
jumped sevenfold, says Parry Singh, chief executive of EthnicGrocer.com Inc.,
GongShee’s parent.
Building a multilingual e-commerce site is no cinch. The overhaul can cost
anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of dollars, depending on a site’s
size, says Alex S. Pressman, president of Uniscape Inc., a globalization
software company. It’s not just about language: A site must handle orders in
different currencies, characters, and measurements. And there are differences in
the way cultures handle the Web. Some languages, and sites, are read from right
to left. And U.S. Net icons such as mailboxes or shopping carts are unfamiliar
in some countries. Designing Web sites is "different in each culture,’’
says Alison C. Toon, globalization guru for HP’s eight-language IT Resource
Center. So snap to it, Webmasters, and start posting pages that reflect the wide
world of today’s Web.
By ROGER O. CROCKETT in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2001 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc