Mandate 2007: Create Culturally Useful Products, Part I

It has long been recognized that language and culture have remarkable influence on business relations. How do you generate products that fit into dissimilar cultures, in numerous languages? How do you develop positive merchant/consumer relationships with today's diversity in cultures?

The world is quickly becoming more and more global in the sense that communities of diverse cultures begin to communicate more freely. Additionally, there are resources for communicating thoughts and ideas across cultures, such as television, the Internet and so on.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO (2002) described culture in this way: "... Culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs." This description will, of course, have huge impact on the products we create and sell online.

To add to the complexity, large societies often have subcultures, which are groups of people with distinctive sets of activities and beliefs that distinguish them from the larger culture, of which they are a part. The subculture might be unique because of the age of the members, or by their race, ethnicity, class or gender. The descriptions that establish a subculture as separate may be religious, aesthetic, political, occupational, sexual, or a mixture of these factors. As you can see, you, as an Internet business owner, have many choices. It is up to you, to see this as a massive blessing, or an overwhelming set of options!

With ownership of computers rapidly becoming commonplace, and Internet usage growing daily, online access is quickly becoming the primary entryway for information, shopping, and services. Additionally, those computer and Internet users are increasingly from non-English speaking areas of the globe. What does this mean for you, the digital businessperson? Is it now time to consider “going global” with your products? What will this mean, for updating and revamping your Web site?

Web site localization is the process of transforming an existing Web site to make it accessible and culturally fitting to a target audience. Web site localization is a multifaceted process that will need your programming expertise as well as some linguistic and cultural knowledge. Remember... culture affects everything we do, say, read, hear, and think. Even Web sites cannot break away from the influence of culture.

We are in a time where the Internet is coming into more and more homes. It is vital that businesses involved in the globalization of their company consider Web site localization and realize that they must begin with some useful cross-cultural analysis. Are you ready to begin giving some serious thought about expanding your business to a global marketplace?

We can all anticipate learning a lot from one other if we will only listen and learn. The world’s populations are not so far apart as they once were. We literally can visit anywhere, at any time! Every culture has its knowledge and all of us should begin to collect knowledge of every culture.

Jonathan Myers, Editor

Return tomorrow for Part II, Mandate 2007: Create Culturally Useful Products

Enjoy!