John Yunker, over at Global by Design's blog, reports on the next step in blogging, the multilingual blog. (And he's not referring to the little Google machine translation widget you can plug into your blog, either.)

102 volumes of Archie comics will soon be available to Vietnamese children.

According to Nguyen Linh Thao, President of Childhood Book Company, there are many reasons translated comic books in Vietnam have come chiefly from Japan and Korea rather than Europe or the US.

Of these, the most important reason is price. Japanese and Korean series are often printed in black and white so they are reasonably priced while their European and American counterparts are in colour.

(edited by freelance English to Chinese translator li)  

Looking for a translator who can make your written material sing in a foreign language the way it does in English? The letters ATA after the translator's name can provide a clue about the person's ability.

McElroy Translation is pleased to announce that it has created a formal corporate philanthropy program, McElroy Gives Back, in honor of its employees. McElroy credits the inspiration for McElroy Gives Back to its employees, who share with McElroy a longstanding history of past donations of in-kind services, cash and volunteerism.

Many companies typically practice corporate philanthropy for only a few select causes. McElroy takes a different approach—one that reflects McElroy’s diverse company culture and recognizes many deserving charities. McElroy Gives Back distinguishes itself in the three following ways.

Company Cash Gifts

McElroy Gives Back will donate a cash gift each month to one charity from twelve charity categories. Categories include health, women and children, environment, housing and community, human services relief, veterans, culture and literacy, special needs and animal protection. Each month the selected charity will be profiled in McElroy’s monthly e-newsletter E-Buzz, and will likely introduce subscribers to some remarkable, but less well-known charities.

This article is for corporate marketing and business development professionals who understand the need for a truly globalized corporate website, but have yet to receive the kind of top-down mandate and funding that would make such an undertaking a success. The current state of their corporate website may, at first glance, appear to be globalized. However, having a truly globalized website means that the core functionality, message, and purpose of the central corporate site have been effectively maintained when re-engineered for audiences in all locales where their corporation does business.

This article offers a step-by-step process to assist you in building an effective business case for comprehensive website globalization. Information is based on a careful analysis of what has worked for other professionals facing a similar challenge. Although individual strategies vary, these are the elements common to most successful campaigns.

STEP ONE: Develop a clear understanding of the current landscape of your company’s global business practices, especially as they transpire on the web.

Be sure you learn:

• how your company’s English content and content on regional websites is currently created—learn who the main content authoring teams and the tools they use, understand the underlying process for creating, modifying, and updating content.
• who the key decision makers and champions will be during the process of getting buy-in, who among them may prove to be good team players on a global web development team, as well as those who may prove difficult or obstructive in getting buy-in, and subsequently, a successfully globalized web site.
• along with “how” and “who,” try to learn why the current landscape of your company’s global business practices is the way it is.

While you may understand perfectly the power and importance of a properly globalized website, you should strive to

• align this importance with your company’s C-level goals.
• produce web metrics (from the corporate website) that indicate a clear trend toward increasing and sustained levels of visitors from outside the U.S.
• indicate from reviewing your company’s quarterly earning statements that there is a trend toward greater revenue for your business from outside the U.S. or build a similar report that indirectly indicates how not having a globalized website negatively impacts the bottom line.

For the rest of this section, we created a fictitious corporation to illustrate how the checklist works. We clearly stress that this is an entirely fictitious company, and your own organization’s processes, goals, pain points, players, etc., may prove to be entirely different in some ways. However, examples are a great way to tie real world scenarios to these guidelines. Use these starting points to build a checklist that is custom-tailored for your particular organization. Once you finish this section you should know if you can build a strong enough business case for globalizing your company’s website.

This article looks at why Chinese travelers are are becoming the number one target for tourism marketers.

China is also the fastest growing outbound tourism market in the world, and by 2020 it is estimated that more than 100 million Chinese will make outbound leisure trips annually. Travel is becoming increasingly accessible to growing numbers of Chinese as a result of rapid economic growth and easier access to foreign visas. Two-thirds of the US$6 billion that Chinese consumers spent on luxury products last year was spent outside China.

What are the top Chinese bloggers saying...now? Global Voices provides a translation of a good summary of the top Chinese bloggers, and what they are talking about. You might be surprised by some of the discussions taking place.

(edited by international telecommuting translator li)

The memory server is a highly available, highly scalable database. It requires multiple user access over the internet so has high bandwidth requirements. Such a server has a high cost of ownership...

(edited by international telecommuting translator li)
It may appear to be ideal to use you overseas agent or distributor to do the translations themselves – they speak the language, know the product and don’t charge the same as a translation agency.

Unfortunately, the end result is usually a major disappointment for all concerned. ..