Using Translation as a Force to Address Information Poverty: AGIS 2010

I have the good fortune to reflect and report on the AGIS 2010 conference as we approach “the holiday season,” which is a time of reflection for many in the world. A time of goodwill and at least temporary good deeds for some. The conference was held in India, which can be a challenge because the basic infrastructure is still primitive, but the event went off well with very few glitches and I think AGIS is slowly building momentum.

AGIS stands for Action for Global Information Sharing, and is focused on conducting a resolute crusade against Information Poverty since its inception. The overall tone and tenor of this conference is very different from the typical conference in the world of enterprise localization (LocWorld, GALA, LISA). The focus is on making all kinds of knowledge and information accessible in places where it has never been available before, not just to sell products. There is clear evidence shared by many speakers, that shows that access to information creates the conditions for economic prosperity or perhaps even actually drives it. In some parts of the world localization is all about reducing information poverty and improving the human condition. Reinhard has provided a summary of the highlights of the event in his blog. There was also coverage here. And for those who ask why do need yet another conference in the industry, Reinhard explains below:

You might be asking yourself, “Why AGIS, why YALC (yet another localisation conference)? What makes AGIS so different?” Well, first of all, it is not owned by any particular organisation, it is not run for profit, and it is (almost) free to attend. Then, it takes place where people need localisation, not where people are rich enough to pay for it. Nothing is sold, nothing is bought at AGIS. And last but not least, AGIS attendees have a social agenda, not (just) a commercial one.

The highlights that can be also be found in the twitter stream on my Friendfeed (Scroll back to newer items to see the chronological sequence. I don’t know why Twitter has already made much of the data unavailable).  

In the keynote, Dr. Vijay Bhatkar (a digital visionary of India) pointed out how globalization and localization are tightly linked and how NLP, MT and language technologies are only just beginning their evolutionary march. He pointed out how Japan’s hopes for world dominance were stymied by linguistic issues and that access to knowledge and information in the 21st century will be key to building prosperity as an increasing part of the GDP of many nations will come from knowledge services. This is already true for India. He informed the Indians in the room, that India can not consider itself an IT power when 350 million people are illiterate and urged the community to preserve the Indian languages while continuing the push forward with English education. He also pointed out that both Telephone and TV are mostly language neutral but information cannot be, and localization is critical to broad access. 

Reinhard Schaler and the Rosetta Foundation are leading an initiative to build a platform to facilitate self configurable, distributed and shared data based global localization initiatives. CNGL and University of Limerick students provided overviews and demonstrations of these tools. Reinhard highlighted that each day 24,000 die children because of lack of access to basic healthcare information. That is 1 every 3 seconds! These deaths could be avoided if information was available more easily. This appears to be a primary motivator and raison d'etre for the Rosetta Foundation.

Ms. Swaran Lata painted a clear picture of the amazing complexity of the Indian linguistic landscape. 20+ major languages with some states having 3-4 languages and multiple scripts. The CDAC organization is attempting to solve the linguistic computing issues to ensure that Indian languages gain a stronger digital presence and are preserved. As Prof. Bhatkar asked: "Can you really say you know Hindi if you cannot  use it on a computer? This is key in the information age."  Ms. Lata described initiatives that focused on the digital education of youth, which interestingly also resulted in the knowledge being passed on to illiterate parents and grandparents. She talked also about initiatives to reach out to the “other side of India” to ensure that illiterate people are not left behind. As Indian consumers become more powerful, Indian languages are critical to reaching their purchasing power.

I spoke about how the Asia Online vision is finally coming to fruition, when we start rolling out a Thai Wikipedia comprising of translations of 3.5 million articles starting in January 2011. When all these articles are up and ready, Thailand will have the second largest Wikipedia in the world after the English one.  This is a huge boost from the current 60,000 article Thai Wikipedia, many which are just barely more than stubs. In contrast, the index alone for just the article titles in the English Wikipedia are in excess of 600,000 pages! The Asia Online project is an initiative that directly addresses information poverty. Shockingly it was also uncovered that the Hindi Wikipedia only has about 50,000 articles for a population of almost 400 million people! This means that a child that does not speak English is deprived of basic educational information access and has a fraction of the content available to an English speaking child.

Some other interesting information from the conference:

• Ravi Gupta pointed out there are 62,000 newspapers in India and 92% of these are not in English
• Subtitles do not work well in India because of literacy issues but they can also be a means of building literacy
• There are no English TV channels in the Top 100 TV channels in India but English speaking consumers are the wealthiest consumers
• Ravi Kumar, The President of  the Indian Translators Association made an impassioned plea asking that buyers and the community at large respect translators as professionals
• The CNGL team showed various elements of the open SOLAS platform they are making available to anybody who needs it
• Mahesh Kulkarni’s wonderful presentation on standards which he called traffic rules that ease both user and creator experience. He has a much more holistic and systematic view of standards than we see from the feeble standards initiatives in the traditional localization industry but he too, expressed the difficulties of getting good standards in place.
• He also pointed that that there are 670 million mobile phones in India and asked is this the end of the internet as we know it? 

 Mahesh Kulkarni and Raimond Doctor are a joy to behold; passionate, knowledgeable and driven in spite of having to deal with Indian governmental bureaucracy as part of their daily lives. Raimond is perhaps the most erudite and knowledgeable person I have met on comparative linguistics. He shares his deep knowledge and insight with a verve that draws you right into his delight for language. I hope that CDAC realize what treasures these men are, and gives them room and resources to execute on their vision and passion.

Reinhard also pointed out that the non profit world was substantially larger in terms of market potential and actual localization activities than the Fortune 500 market. Non-profit does not mean no payment, no recognition and jobs, it is in fact bigger than the energy sector in US.  

Take a look at this TED video to see how information access can change lives and empower people to learn, take control and transform their own lives.

If there is a revolution coming in translation – I think one is much more likely to see the first signs of the revolution at a conference like AGIS, rather than at more mainstream localization conferences. We see all the key elements lining up here: people focused on large scale collaboration infrastructure, community and crowdsourcing management, massive translation automation and standards and the most important ingredient of all: PASSION. We see people at this conference who are driven by a passion to change the world. We see people who are not making a lot of money but are still working long and diligent hours. We see people undertaking translation projects that will involve hundreds of millions of words on a routine basis. We see technology, collaboration tools & infrastructure and community coming together in ways that just does not happen at traditional professional translation events.  We see people who want to make an impact on the human condition. We hear and see people talking about nation building and the human right to knowledge. This kind of talk gets me all warm inside and I think this is what we all had in common, a “higher” sense of purpose and mission which does not equate to a stance of moral superiority as some might think. Many of the people here have a soul satisfying answer to the question: Why do you do what you do? Isn't that enough?

My interest in automated translation has always been related to the potential impact this technology has on improving information access and thus improving human lives across the world and also potentially improving the quality and depth of communication between linguistic groups, cultures and nations. One step on the way to Pacem in Terris? Foolish and idealistic perhaps, but we need to dare to dream first before we can actually make it happen. As a teenager, a wise man told me once, “You are the world and the world is you” and I have explored that statement ever since,  holding it close to heart as a seminal influence in my life.

Join and support the Rosetta Foundation and help make this into a movement that cannot be stopped. If you have the ability to influence a major corporate entity to get involved and support this please do so now, and join Reinhard as he forges and builds this new path to change the world for the better.

And as if that were not enough, I even had a brief meeting with former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, who even in his nineties has a stature, grace and humility that is disarming. He was impressed by the Thai Wikipedia project I am involved with, and said it would be wonderful for India to do the same in Hindi. And thanks to my friend Vishal I also got to meet several industry leaders of emerging India who seek to build transparency and a relatively corruption free government.

I was also greatly heartened to see the corruption establishment take a serious blow when Minister Raja was exposed for taking obscenely huge bribes, in excess of $40 billion I believe. What makes corruption in India especially horrific is the complete lack of remorse and shame that these public officials have. India is on the move but still has far to go as the culture of corruption is everywhere you turn, and will not die easily. One of the other benefits of free flowing information is that it also makes this kind of self dealing and abuse of trust harder to maintain. Information poverty is also an enabler and friend of corrupt officials and thus this is yet another reason to address this issue. 

Happy Holidays to you all and I hope that you explore and find "goodness" in your life. And here is the link to holiday greetings in many languages.

Megatrends and Their Impact on Professional Translation

I have recently made public presentations to audiences of LSPs and localization professionals about broad trends affecting the world of professional translation. My perspective seemed to resonate and I thought it might be useful to put the core message in a blog entry and share it, to possibly get critical feedback or extend the discussion. In some ways I have touched upon these “megatrends” in earlier blog entries (Why MT Matters, The Data Deluge, Translation Technology, Innovation in Localization)  but it is useful to bring it all together in a single place.

I am aware that others are making similar points but I think this summary incorporates conversations I have heard around the web and is closer to the collective intelligence. The trends in brief are as follows:

• There is an explosion in relevant content affecting global enterprises
• Social Media and Social Networks are now increasingly in control of branding impressions
• There is an increasing use of open innovation and community collaboration models in many businesses
• Translation technology and automation are becoming increasingly important for speed and cost reasons
• A rising Asia will change the priority of strategic languages away from the current FIGS dominance

The Content Explosion

We are seeing exponential growth in the digital universe and much of it is very relevant to global enterprise concerns. It is important to understand that this is happening on a scale never before seen in the history of man. A lot of this content is related to facilitating global commerce so understanding this becomes highly relevant for the global enterprise.

The Impact of Social Networks and Customer Conversations

The carefully calculated marketing and corporate image control that global enterprises have been used to is also coming undone. Brand impressions are increasingly being formed by real customer conversations in social networks. We see that the world of marketing is undergoing a transformation and what used to be considered critical corporate messaging is increasingly viewed as “corporate-speak” and is often not trusted by the end-customers who matter the most. Jeremiah Owyang wrote a prescient blog entry three years ago where he predicted this shift and increasingly the corporate website is seen as a place where pro-corporate bullshit resides. More and more, the high value content is being created by customers and business partners and corporations have little editorial control of this content creation process.

The Growing Importance of Open Innovation & Collaboration Models

We are also seeing that co-creation of products and services with customers can be a huge momentum builder. Facebook has shown that engaging users in translating interfaces can also help accelerate building the customer base in those languages. Their international growth has been closely linked to their crowdsourcing translation efforts even though crowdsourcing can be less predictable.  Dell actively solicits and nurtures active customer feedback in IdeaStorm to develop new products. Collaborating with customers and partners is emerging as a way to to engage customers, build loyalty and accelerate penetration in new markets. There are very few large companies that have figured out how to do this because open collaboration is a huge cultural change from the command and control mentality that most executives work with. In the B2B world this may also mean that customers prefer best-of-breed solutions to one-stop solutions. Diversification is generally considered a wise investment strategy and is increasingly understood to be a good way to build business infrastructure and avoid vendor lock-in even though it may also mean more integration work.

 The Rise of Asia

Western Europe and FIGS have dominated the professional translation world historically. While FIGS will remain important, in the future it looks like Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish will be the most important European languages and Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian and other Asian languages will become increasingly more important and strategic as global revenue generating translation investments. Many companies now are expanding their base of languages and the FIGS-CJK view is slowly receding.The graphic below is clear in it’s implications: Asia offers substantial commercial opportunity for those who make the localization investments. I have written previously about how Asia is a long-term opportunity for truly global companies. (I will update it shortly as the momentum keeps building.) There are many market potential studies that suggest Asia offers significant opportunity for IT infrastructure, mobile devices, luxury goods as well as new bottom of the pyramid (BOP) product opportunities.

What Does All This Mean?

So if we add all this up it shows that global enterprises are facing a content deluge with dynamic content coming from both internal and external sources and high volumes of this content is expected to be translated increasingly faster to have any value in competitive situations. Global enterprises that quickly identify high value content and make it multilingual will find that this can drive international revenues and that translation can be a strategic tool to building long-term competitive advantage.

Now, more than at any other time in history, speed and agility are decisive competitive advantages...David Meerman Scott

However this is a time of revolution, and the TEP (Translate-Edit-Proof) and SDL (Software and Documentation Localization) mindsets are not likely to be adequate to meet these new translation challenges. The old approach worked for static, low volume content but new thinking and new approaches are required to deal with the data deluge today. Automated translation is an absolute necessity in the new world but this is not the MT of yesteryear that many are still implementing and describing at localization conferences today.

In the new world, data has to flow from content creation to consumption as seamlessly as possible, delivered to where it is needed at desired quality levels. This means that humans need to be part of the production process and are the key to producing the best quality. The future is about much better man-machine collaboration. The automated translation tools need to be learning and getting better all the time. They need to be responsive to skilled human linguistic steering and corrective feedback. They need to be focused on dynamic streams of content not just static, packaged translation projects like user documentation. They need to understand that with flowing content, upstream cleanup efforts will flow through the production line and make every downstream process easier and more efficient. They see the information cycle as a system, as organic and thus build the collaboration infrastructure to address the whole problem. They need to see MT systems improve with human steering, in weeks, not months or years. They need to be MT systems that can be trained and managed by skilled professionals to get you to “good enough” production quality “fast enough” to have a positive impact on your business, not the black box MT of yesteryear. If you look closely there are very few choices in reality. (Think Asia Online!)

Have you noticed that Google and Bing Translate improve regularly since they shifted to statistical MT (SMT)? Does that tell you something? Why did we not see these improvements when these same companies were RbMT based?  On domain focused systems the progress and quality improvements are even more compelling. I have recently seen Asia Online systems compared to heavily customized RbMT “hybrid” systems, and it is clear that the yield to effort ratios with hybrid SMT approaches are clearly superior, (I am of course biased) but the evidence continues to mount. (BTW Moses is perhaps 5% of what is needed to accomplish this). In the future professionals will undertake to translate content streams that contain tens of millions of words that encapsulate important customer conversations. If translation is strategic make sure that you align with technology that can go the distance and that has demonstrated the ability to evolve.

As more senior corporate executives realize that translation is strategic, and that translation technology properly used can generate substantial revenue in global markets, they will start to look at solving these new kinds of translation problems. Executive managers are unlikely to be excited by the possibility of getting user documentation done faster and cheaper. However, as they start to get their hands around the fact that customer conversations are important (many are struggling with this), and that they need to respond with speed and agility to build global customer relationships, we can expect to see a new kind of executive who will seek to make flowing content multilingual. They will care that real standards exist (not SDL versions) and will likely remove products that do not comply. Handling the flow efficiently will become the focus, and the most visionary localization managers may even have senior roles in making this happen. Speed and agility are key and customer engagement across the globe will require a real understanding of how to make these dynamic content focused translation systems work. There is a video of an extended presentation version of this blog available from the Localization Technology Roundtable seminar (starts at about 4’30” after introduction). (Yes, I need to lose weight or at least wear shirts that are not so tight).

We are living in a time of great change. In times of change there is often an opportunity for new paradigms and new leaders to launch, remember MSFT grabbing the desktop market away from IBM and Google grabbing away the web search market from MSFT?  New leaders with new visions are the change agents that make this happen, and they are often dismissed by the established status quo and “leaders” of the time. I do not see that new MT initiatives by Lionbridge and SDL really address these new needs. I think there is too much of the old view in their approach,  but I may be proven wrong. I am skeptical that the current “market leaders” have the vision and/or culture to drive this change and I think we will see somebody from outside the industry or smaller, more agile LSPs be the driving force of this coming change. For current leaders to be change agents often means cannibalizing current revenue streams and very few have succeeded in crossing that chasm. We shall see as this unfolds.

In revolution, the best of the new is incompatible with the best of the old. It’s about doing things a whole new way...Clay Shirky

Anyway these are truly interesting times, and it looks like things will get even more interesting. 

Translation Humor & Mocking Machine Translation

I often run into blogs by translators and LSPs or just regular people who suggest that machine translation is not quite ready. In fact some people actually, believe it or not, mock MT. So while I do believe that MT is going be very much a part of the translation landscape in the very near future, I thought it would be fun to pick some of my favorite examples of MT gone awry. 

While MT mishaps can be funny I still think that humans, especially silly humans can do better, and my first example is by Ben who translated this Bollywood song and just put down what he thought he heard. I speak the language (Hindi) she is singing in and I laughed till I cried. In fact I can’t stop smiling as I type this. For those who want to know, “meheboob mereh” actually means my beloved.  

These are Ben’s own words on what he was trying to do:
My translation of an Indian music video. This is what I think the words sound like. www.bugben.com

Translation Party is a popular site that uses a familiar technique used to make MT look bad. You keep translating the same phrase back and forth and perhaps even across various languages to make sure that you make MT output that is really bad. Interestingly there are some “MT consultants” who also use this technique to test MT technology. A pointless exercise if you are serious, but can be great fun if you are just playing. So in my test,  <practice makes perfect and there is no substitute for hard work> was translated as <after working really hard Substitute>. Interestingly it was 100% accurate on <please do not poop on my knee> and gave me the same phrase back. I think that shows that when it really matters it can get things right.

Another personal favorite of mine is from Jill Sommer who had this little gem on her blog. Here is a tiny movie with a dialog developed completely from MT round tripping. As she describes it:

This fine little film by Matt Sloan capitalizes on Babelfish for its dialog. It translates to and from English, French and German. It was filmed on location in Trouville, France. Enjoy!

Mark Liberman in his Language Log blog shows this little furry iPod docking station gadget and with the following description which is suspected to be machine translation:

iMini is built in the rhythm decoding chip MJ1191 of the programming embedded system, and to integrate the HIPS skeleton; No matter you play any kind of music, MJ1191 always make your pet in dancing for you at once.

Another site that is always good for a laugh is Engrish.com. These are examples of mostly Chinese and Japanese attempts at translation into English. And this restaurant sign is one I often use in my presentations to show what MT is without human translator involvement. If you have not ever looked at the site, it is quite funny http://engrish.com/ . Here is one that is fun. I am told that there is a site in Japan with funny Japanese phrases from foreigners and I am sure the Chinese are laughing at us too. Just take a look at some of the strange Chinese character tattoos.

Here is a blog that specializes in finding strange translation examples from across the world. http://www.lostintranslationbook.com/. Here are some examples we collected from around the world and put on our website (in the left column).  

Anyway while I do laugh at these examples, I do believe the technology is improving all the time and as they say, he who laughs last, laughs the loudest. 

Let me know if you find other fun stuff and if I like it I will add it to this entry or create another entry with the best examples that people find.  Let's focus on really funny and not just wrong, since that would be like laughing at Sarah Palin.



P.S. The Huffington Post found some funny subtitles: Lost In Translation: When Subtitles Go Wrong

I also found another site of mostly human translation gaffes but I thought I would continue to add the best links I find over time to this entry.

 

Thanks to The Full Blog

And a few more from the Globalization Group and here is an explanation on why the translation industry is "hella lame".

And of course Monty Python with their Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook.

And for those of you who don't speak hip-hop, here is an excellent translation of the song My Hump.

This is a late insertion and shows you how human beings are always  SOOOOO much funnier than anything that MT could dream up. 60 Unintentionally Offensive Business and Product Names - Anybody want to buy some Asshoe shoes, or try some of that tasty Fart juice that goes really well with JussiPussi rolls and Shitto sauce?
 

Rising Asia and its Implications

Somebody whose opinion I really value, just told me that my blog is about "men fighting" after seeing my first three posts. While I really do care about responsible free speech and will always aggressively defend it; enough about censorship and moderator abuses and let's move on.

I find the notion of "A Rising Asia" interesting,  and I think it presents a major opportunity for the localization and translation industry in the years to come. I was first introduced to this concept many years ago by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in their excellent book, Thunder from the East.  (They were also among the first to point out the promise of China/Rising Asia, several years before the "experts" did.)  I really liked the book because it also quickly provided an economic history of the world and is a very easy read.

I thought it would be good to update and expand upon an article I wrote for GALA a little while ago. I have been surprised how little real awareness there is even in the localization industry where leaders often equate Asia with China & Japan (CJK).  This was really brought home at the #LTBKK conference, when I saw what a revelation Biraj Rath's excellent presentation on the Indian localization market opportunity was, to many industry experts. LISA, to their credit announced an India Forum shortly after the conference.

So I thought it might be useful to provide a basic primer on the broader Asian market opportunity. For some in the L10N industry this might all be obvious but here goes anyway. I am interested because:

- There are a lot of people living in Asia (maybe 95% of the next billion Internet users)

- The Internet has very low penetration thus far. Multilingual content will very likely play a key role in driving increasing  penetration and commercial opportunity.

- They will need a lot of information quickly (huge opportunity for automated translation technology)

- Largest concentration of young people in the world (also the Middle East and Brazil) 

 

Asia is extremely diverse, economically and culturally, but yet there are some strong common elements. It is also much less connected than Europe. Today, we are aware of the current economic momentum that India and China have, historically they both also had a deep and lasting cultural influence on much of Asia. An awareness of this history is very useful in developing effective business strategies for different countries. The internet is only just beginning to take root in much of Asia (18% vs. 73% for North America), however, it is expected that almost half of all Internet users will be Asian by 2013. Already, China has more people online than the US. Asia could be a major opportunity for companies that learn to tap into this new emerging online population. But this will require an understanding of the diversity and characteristics of the various segments and will also need new approaches in communication and marketing. Asian economies continue to rise in importance and growth, as both a supplier and consumer. Today China and India are the largest mobile phone markets in the world.

Some interesting and perhaps less known facts about Asia that provide a useful contrast to Europe are shown below. They also give one a sense for the different type of opportunities available and the differing reality of Asia.

-GDP per Capita in Asia (~$15,000) is less than half of the EU average and there is a much wider standard distribution and a large population living in poverty throughout the continent.
-While India and China are among the fastest growing economies in the world, the GDP per Capita is $2,800 for India and $6,000 for China and they should still be considered developing economies.
-The top GDP/Capita countries (2008) in Asia are: Singapore ($52K), HK, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea ($23K), Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Thailand ($8.5K).
-India has 22 official languages that are as distinct and different as the 23 EU languages, and also include at least 6 different scripts. English is only spoken by about 7% of the people in India. However, it is possible to get deep penetration into the Indian market with 5 key languages.
-There is very little local language content for Asian languages on the web in general. Based on a survey done by Asia Online in 2007, less than 15% of the total content on the web is in Asian languages. Almost 90% of the Asian language content is in Chinese and Japanese. There is huge need for more local language content all over SE Asia.
-Mandarin is beginning to edge out English as the preferred 2nd language in Asia
-China is now the fastest growing patent office in the world. The WIPO and others state that China is clearly an emerging scientific and technological power.
-The share of Asian country based patent filings is now in excess of 50% of all patents filed across the world.
-India has more gifted and talented students in high school than the total school student population in the US.
-China has more students in Science and Technology college degree programs than India and the US combined.
-McKinsey has identified a “Rising Asia” as a stable long term trend that will fundamentally change consumption patterns. Gartner suggests using IT to reach the market. They suggest that global companies use IT to ‘lighten’ their Asian business model to address the specific cultural, geographic reach, and supply chain considerations.
-The wealthy Asians are concentrated in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Delhi, Seoul, Manila and Bangkok.
-China is now the fastest growing market for Bentley and BMW.
-More cars are now sold in China than in America.
-Even countries like Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Cambodia which have very low GDP/Capita are interesting markets for cell phones and basic commodities.
-An understanding of Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism cultural perspectives can dramatically enhance your communications strategy into most parts of Asia.
-The fastest growing FaceBook markets in 2H2009 are Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand.
-Google is not dominant in key Asian markets, in Korea they have less than 2% search market share and they are a distant second in China and Japan. Maybe even completely out of China soon. Local companies dominate because of better understanding of local content, language and customer preferences. This suggests that standard US approaches may not work as well in many Asian markets.
-Chinese social networking startups have produced many innovations that have led to them becoming profitable much faster than US equivalents like MySpace and Facebook.  We are now seeing Asian innovation gradually making its way to the west.
-Most of Asia has been relatively unscathed by the global financial and real estate market collapse.
-India is increasingly considered a "soft power". Influential culturally way beyond it's direct sphere of influence.

-The venture capital markets in India and China are rapidly developing with help from "returning" entrepreneurs and hostile US immigration policies.

But simple strategies like simply making your web content available in the local language may not work. Asian cultures may look superficially similar and even western on the surface, but can have deep cultural differences. The localization market is estimated to be $1.5B in 2010 and could grow dramatically. My sense is that those numbers miss much of the impact of recent growth as the Facebook trends show, mobile computing and successful bottom of the pyramid marketing strategies.


All of these factors point to fundamental shifts in the global economy and indicate that many of these trends will accelerate further. Asia is a significant opportunity for informed globalization managers -- and probably key for long-term leadership for many global enterprises.

Global companies need to develop broad and unique country-specific strategies to be able to prosper and thrive in this rapidly changing world. Localization and translation will be key elements of any successful globalization plan and should present significant opportunities to vendors that prepare for this change.

It's wise to remember that the Chinese ideogram for "change" can also mean "opportunity."