Globalization expert John Yunker reports on the event from his blog.

Seattle hosted the 2010 Localization World Conference from October 6^th to 8^th 2010.

I had hoped to turn this into a “blog round-up”, with various reports and impressions of the event gleaned from the blogosphere. But, sadly, my Google “blog search” for the conference turned up a lot of pre-game announcements, but not much after-the-fact analysis.

So a report on one post will have to do.

But what a post! Yunker’s Notes from Localization World Seattle presents plenty of thought-provoking notions from the conference. He makes seven main observations, but three points especially caught my eye:

1.    The record turnout at LWC 2010, as well as scuttlebutt picked up about major web localization projects in the offing, make Yunker feel optimistic about the future of the localization industry.

2.    Something as simple as a site’s url can be a way to reach out to the locals. Yunker reports on Xerox’s presentation about how the company changed from a “.com” site address base to ccTLDs, or “country code Top-Level Domains.” In other words, German users now see Xerox.de rather than the unwieldy “Xerox.com/index/dede.html”.

3.    Facebook is a hot topic everywhere, including in the localization sector. In fact, four of Yunker’s seven points mentioned the social networking giant.

The next Localization World conference will be held in Barcelona, Spain from June 14-16, 2011.

Betty Carlson

See Also

• Language Translation, Inc.
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