"When I'm asked to write an article about globalization, I visit the Global Reach Web site . I check the (almost) real-time "Online Language Population" chart (see Figure 1) and refer to it at the beginning of my article, as I'm doing here. What always interests me is the rapid growth of the Chinese language. A year and a half ago, Chinese represented 9.8% of the world's online populations. In September, 2003, it is up to 12.2%, with billions of potential users still to be added.
"Because of this statistic, I often tell people that 'English is becoming just another dialect of the internet language--you have to support all languages to reach the growing number of visitors from different parts of the world.' My prediction might have seemed like hype five years ago, but today, you had better believe it, or resign yourself to local business only."
--Yoshito Kawada
Technical Expert for Globalization Guidance
IBM Globalization Center of Competency, Yamato, Japan
Figure 1: Online languages, September 2003. Source: Global Reach Web site |
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