I have worked with many customers where globalization [G11N] of content (which is combination of Internationalization [I18N] - making sure your code is not tied to any language specific logic, and Localization [L10N] - having content in multiple languages), is a hot topic during the requirement phase but it does not get fully implemented by end of the project. Reason? Well, there are many reasons, but most importantly is how critical is this for business users compared to other things in the project.  One of the hard part of this process in L10N, as developers can be guided to write logic keeping I18N in mind, but business processes have to be in place to translate appropriate content in a timely manner.

Reading the ‘The Global CMS Reality‘ on CMS Myth made me reflect on those customers again. This blog entry on CMS Myth mentions the report on ‘The World in 2009 - The Economist‘, which explains “Of the 1.5 billion people who will use the Internet regularly in 2009, only fifteen percent live in the United States. Only thirty percent speak English as their first language”. This is a powerful statement, as it explains clearly if you want to the company with global reach, you better have a globalized site, and this cannot remain a nice-to-have requirement, but should be part of critical requirement.

CMS vendors have also come a long way in making this process easy (well, easy in a relative manner), and with the combination of their products and best practices of G11N (extremely important to know, else you may end up with an inflexible design), customers have a fair chance of getting their site globalized.

If your site is not G11N ready, time to wake up and start planning, it doesn’t matter whether you have a CMS tool or not, if you want to reach the global audience, you better be multi-lingual!