On the contrary, to embark on their global presence, Facebook launched an application called “Translations” and through this application, the tedious process was crowd sourced, allowing the millions of Facebook users worldwide to participate in the translation process.

Within a few weeks, Facebook managed to release its first ever localized version in February of 2008 when they launched their Spanish site.For the months to follow, volunteers from all over the world had utilized this application to help translate the social network into every other major language in the world.

After seeing the success of “Translations”,Facebook did not just stop there,instead they continued their global mapping on the other sites and applications across the internet; as long as the site or application uses Facebook Connect, they will be able to leverage on Facebook’s global community in getting it translated into any language that Facebook Translations supports.

This move by Facebook would have epitomized Facebook’s philosophy “Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected” but on the flipside, Facebook is at the same time patenting this crowdsourcing translations process which had helped transformed them into the global entity they are today, seeking to profit from other networks that are thinking of using similar method to localize their content.

Source: [Facebook Translations,Inside Facebook,TechCrunch]

With this move,YouTube and Google have signified the importance of web localization as they seek to provide a local experience for its increasing number of non-English speaking users from all over the world.

This latest additions include Croatian, Filipino, Serbian and Slovak, making it a grand total of 28 languages available on YouTube.

[Source:Wired.com]

This article brings you up to speed with 8 excellent reasons.

1 ‐ Foreign markets are golden gooses in the making
Research carried out by Nielsen Netratings  described  foreign  internet  markets  as  “low-hanging fruit,” that is, with foresight and willpower, one can generate considerable revenue with relatively little effort.

The studies revealed that internet use in the traditional strong holds of the USA, Germany, the UK and Sweden has reached a plateau. On the other hand, in  countries  where English is not the native language such as  France,  Hong Kong,  Italy  and   Japan,  internet use is increasing exponentially.

As Kaizad Gotla, senior analyst at Nielsen Netratings states, “The  easiest opportunities  are in countries where internet usage patterns and user/site relationships are less  established. Acquiring users in markets that are currently in their growth stages  will  lead to a loyal user base that will pay dividends for internet companies in the future.”

2 ‐ Be the leader of the pack
Think outside the box if you want to get ahead in today’s competitive environment. Differentiate  your business from your competitors’. If they do not have multilingual websites, step up and take the lead. Establish your company or brand abroad before they do so. Eventually, companies without multilingual websites will have to contend with competitors who do. It is hardly surprising that customers would choose the website of the competitor that literally “speaks their language”.

3 ‐ Your website is your window to the world
The cost of localizing your website into another language is nominal compared with the returns you could gain. A multilingual website will bring an influx of new customers. By having your site accessible to potentially hundreds of thousands of people, you are showcasing your company across the world. For non‐English speaking users looking for your product or service, you automatically capture their attention.

4 ‐ Give your brand international presence
Having the ability to communicate to a whole new international audience in their own language will deliver results not only in the financial sense but also in terms of marketing and creating awareness of your brand, your range of services and products. A multilingual website is certainly one of the most cost effective ways of marketing your company, capturing new users, building relationships with new clients and giving your brand an international presence. Image is everything. A multilingual website demonstrates you think, work and deal across cultures and across borders.

5 ‐ Put in the personal touch
A multilingual website, if designed properly, overcomes potential cultural barriers through
allowing access in the local language. This immediately puts the user into a ‘cultural comfort zone’ as they are able to navigate, understand and interact with the website. This gives you bonus points as consumers who feel at home will be more willing to  engage your services or purchase your product.

6 ‐ Gain the trust of consumers
For many cultures there is an issue of trust when it comes to buying over the Internet, especially if the website is in a language they have trouble understanding fully. Offering your products or services in their local language allows customers to feel secure in the fact that they know what they are buying, the procedures they have to undertake and the people they are buying from.

7 ‐ Appeal to the popular search engines
Search engines lead people to your site. In China, Japan and France, Google, Yahoo and MSN are not the default search engines. Home-grown search engines are emerging and they are proving successful because they operate in their native languages and are focused on the habits and needs of their users. Such search engines are a key to tapping those markets and having pages of your site available in those languages ensure maximum potential for your site being picked up in searches.

8 – Test the waters with your website
Still unconvinced about the advantages of having a multilingual website? Well, a multilingual website is actually the perfect platform to test the response of a foreign market before you pump in more resources. With a multilingual website, you can communicate with a large audience and yet avoid the need to deal with the printing and distribution costs of having printed collaterals. Frequent updates to your website can be done with the click of a mouse, without incurring reprinting costs.

With the far-reaching advantages having a multilingual website brings, what else is holding you back?

1. Using a global template
To differentiate segments of your global audience, you could use a global template to help segregate your different target audiences and direct them to the respective site corresponding to their locale.

Examples of such usage is in the form of a splash page for visitors to select their location as shown below in the example of McDonald’s international site, and Manchester United’s main site, in which visitors can select their respective language through a dropdown box.

The use of global templates would help set the platform for your global operations as visitors can easily navigate and find the webpage in their native language. Newly localized sites can also be added easily to the global template.

2. Ensuring Cultural and Political Sensitivity
To avoid any form of backlash, it is of utmost importance for businesses to cultivate a sense of cultural and political sensitivity in terms of their website content.

It might be considered alright to use a banner that contains pictures of scantily clad ladies in more liberal nations such as the United States however it would be considered culturally insensitive to do so in regions such as the Middle East.

Failure to ensure cultural and political sensitivity in your web content will not only affect your business operations, and depending on the severity of the issues, businesses might even be forced to shut down their operations in that particular region, inevitably damaging their global reputation.

3.Creating a local experience
Although you might not have local offices set up in your target markets, it is still possible to ensure visitors to your site can have an experience that caters to their locale;

One such example will be the use of local phone numbers in the website. Calls can then be directed to the nearest regional offices. Another example would be the use of local currencies in your product catalog.

Other factors to look into are demonstrating an awareness of public holidays. Some successful global brands put up notices of well wishes and even change their website themes to commemorate special occasions. The following is an example of Google’s thematic change to commemorate Singapore’s National Day.

4.Using of icons
As you might not have translated your website to the native language of your target market; a practical approach to go about this language barrier would be the usage of universal icons instead of just words for your links. This will ensure that visitors who are not familiar with your language would still be able to navigate through the website even with differences in terms of language understanding.

5.Optimizing your website
Even as high speed internet access is somewhat prevalent in most developed countries, there are still many parts of the world that do not have such a luxury. Thus it is important that your website is properly optimized so as to ensure browsing consistency.

Some simple steps you can take are to ensure that your images are properly re-sized and other multimedia elements, especially those with huge file sizes, are used sparingly.

A good practice would also be to test the loading time of your website in various connection speeds as it might take a much longer time to load due to differences in bandwidth in other parts of the world.