In this era of globalization it is natural for persons to argue that sites ought to be available in multiple languages. They are absolutely right when they state that if one's customers are non-English speaking that in today's e-commerce driven environment of business that one ought to cater to those who pay the bills.
However, for those entities that may not have the budget yet to perform the conversion professionally, there tools out there that can be used to get the job done.
One such tool by our favourite Internet company, Google, allows for instant translation of any website. One just needs to download their toolbar and away you go! This is certainly a hassle-free way of maneuvering sites of variant languages.
FreeTranslation.com and Google Translate, are perhaps a little more cumbersome since you have a bit of cutting and pasting to do in order for the translation to be carried out.
One of the areas that many folks tend to ignore is that the commercial sector for differently able persons is a multi-billion dollar segment and yet one scarcely hears arguments for making sites accessible to these persons. For those who are interested in making their sites fully accessible there is the Web Accessibility Initiative. To check to see if your site is accessible one can also plug one's URL in at the EvalAccess home page.
My point is this: yes website builders and administrators need to ensure that their sites cater to all of their publics effectively. However, in this Internet age, there is virtually nothing one cannot find in the form of a solution on the World Wide Web if we searched hard enough.
I'd be happy to hear your comments or you can email me at christalpm@gmail.com.
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