When will we have Web 2.0 apps in other languages?
Internationalisation and Web 2.0
Having checked the list mentioned in my previous post I was wondering:
Hungarians form only a small user base, so it's obvious that there won't be so much software developed for them (in the beginnings, at least), but frankly I was surprised that none of the listed applications had been localized so far (As far as I know, the only exception is Gmail: its interface is available in 38 languages.)
For instance take del.icio.us: it has the simplest user interface ever, so most likely there are only a few messages, strings to translate. I can' really catch why haven't they already done that? The lack of internationalization reduces the userbase dramatically, on the other hand gives opportunities for non-english developers to create clone sites, like http://icio.de . Ok, this site contains only 3500 bookmarks at the time of writing, but it can gain a huge user base quickly.
Anyway the words like l10n and i18n (localisation and internationalisation) are desperately missing from the dictionary of web 2.0 enthusiastics and evangelists. I guess I will have to think about it a bit more so as to figure out, why is this so, but one thing is for sure: there are a lot of opportunities in this field with huge expectations: recent research shows that approximately only 16% of Hungarians speak English, an other 17% speak German. Not all countries have so miserable statistics when it comes to foreign languages, but this example clearly shows that there are a lot of users who cannot access web 2.0 thus they are condemned to keep on using web 1.0...
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