Submitted to CRM Buyer by Swamy Viswanathan, VP of Products at SDL Language Weaver:

At the end of the day, global business is all about understanding people and cultures, and how various people and cultures expect interactions and communications to occur. The best communication occurs when both parties understand one another well. When content is presented in the language of the site visitor, time on the page increases, along with willingness to conduct commerce and overall involvement with the site.

Less than 15 years ago, establishing a global presence was a conscious decision that a company made. It usually involved long and complex discussions about offices, physical presence and physical travel.

With the advent of the Web, all of that changed in an instant. With the establishment of a website, every company, no matter how big or small, was instantly a global entity — whether it was prepared to be or not.

Companies have since become good at managing the content on their sites. They know how to have a consistent brand show up across their site and are able to inform visitors whether or not all of the functions and capabilities of their site are relevant or enabled the visitor’s country.

To read more, please visit: http://www.languageweaver.com/page/view/1504/976/

Below is an insert from ITBusiness Edge:

In the last two decades, the Web has brought invaluable communication channels for companies of all sizes, and the innovative ways to reach new audiences in new ways just keep on coming. However, there is one basic communication need that has proven to be more challenging to deliver via the Web – language.

When a company launches or updates a Web site, that information is instantly available to a global audience. For some companies, this won’t matter because they are only serving a small local population, but for a growing number of businesses of all sizes, the global nature of the Web is bringing bright opportunities. For these companies, delivering information to their site visitors and customers in their own language is critical to compete in a global market.

To help global companies address the needs of their diverse customer base and encourage them to make purchases, Mark Tapling, president and CEO of Language Weaver, offers the following tips for translating Web content.

To view slideshow on Five Tips for Translating Web Content, please visit http://www.itbusinessedge.com/slideshows/show.aspx?c=82801

Below is an insert from SoCalTech.com article by Benjamin F. Kuo, SoCalTech.com

Last month, Los Angeles-based Language Weaver (www.languageweaver.com), the developer of machine translation software, was acquired by SDL, a publicly held, UK-based firm in the language translation business. Having followed the firm since its early days as a spinout of USC, we thought we’d talk with CEO Mark Tapling to get the back story behind the acquisition, and where the firm is going form here.

To read more on the back story behind the acquisition, please visit http://www.languageweaver.com/page/view/1505/976/

The following is an insert from Tnooz.com article submitted by Swamy Viswanathan, VP of Products, SDL Language Weaver:

NB: This is a guest post by Swamy Viswanathan, vice president of products and marketing at Language Weaver, a Los Angeles-based software company specialising in content translation.

Ever wonder what the most popular sites do to keep traffic and grow their business? While the specific formula for success is different for each site, there are some things in common that most popular sites do.

Here is a list of ten top tips that you might find relevant to apply towards your own site:

1. Make content relevant

Would you ever go back to a store if the store shelves had no labels and items were not grouped together?

Or if the store claimed to be selling one thing, but actually sold something else? Obviously not!

Likewise, make sure that your site visitors find information that they have come to see and read about. Don’t just throw content on a page in the mistaken notion that more content will automatically lead to a better page rank.

More content does lead to a better rank – but only if the content is relevant.

To read the next nine steps to make global travel websites more engaging, visit: http://www.languageweaver.com/page/view/lng/1503/976/64/

The following is an insert from DMNews article submitted by Swamy Viswanathan, VP of Products, SDL Language Weaver:

This is all the more important today since the Web is on its way to evolving from an environment where the primary language of communication is English to one where English is only spoken by a minority of visitors. Research shows that if content is presented in the native language of a visitor, engagement increases as evidenced by clickthroughs or time spent on the page. Increased engagement results in increased commerce or affinity to the business.

To achieve these goals of reaching customers, businesses need to consistently follow these simple rules:

1. Make all content that is appropriate to a channel available to a customer: Don’t be selective – let the consumer decide what is important to them.
2. Ensure that the content is available in the language of the customer: pre-translate all content that you are publishing.
3. Make the content natively findable in the language of the customer: Ensure that content and keywords are translated to make the content findable and searchable.
4. Respond to customers in their language: Ensure that the tools used for sentiment analysis can translate a user’s feedback for analysis and decision making. Integrate translation into e-mail and chat to ensure a continuous channel of communication with customers.

To read more, please visit: http://www.dmnews.com/dont-let-online-marketing-be-spoiled-by-language-barriers/article/176181/

On Thursday, July 15, 2010, SDL announced the cash acquisition of Language Weaver. In this podcast, Mark Tapling, CEO of SDL Language Weaver, answers common questions regarding how this acquisition effects government customers.

Today, July 15, SDL announced the acquisition of Language Weaver. The acquisition by SDL addresses the need to provide global companies with a strategy for machine translation across the enterprise.

In this podcast, Mark Lancaster, CEO of SDL, and Mark Tapling, President and CEO of Language Weaver discuss why SDL acquired Language Weaver, how Language Weaver’s technologies fit into SDL’s existing product suite, how the new business unit will be structured and more.

Today is an important day for Language Weaver – a day that marks the validation and continuation of our vision for both the company and for automated translation.

Language Weaver is pleased to announce that today, July 15, 2010, the company has been acquired by SDL, the world leader in Global Information Management.

Eight years ago, Language Weaver was founded to develop commercially viable automated translation software, based on a new statistical methodology.  Since then, the company has been dedicated to its mission to deliver compelling quality translation software solutions for both government and commercial customers.  To date, the software has been installed in hundreds of locations, a number that continues to grow.  Last quarter alone we added a dozen new brand name commercial customers to our deployment roster.

However, automated translation is always part of a larger communication strategy for both government and commercial customers.  By joining the SDL family, Language Weaver’s vision to accelerate the way the world communicates expands into more parts of a business and across more types of content.

Customers will see the largest benefits from this acquisition.

First, it expands the options for companies that want to communicate globally by enabling them to use automated translation for more types of content – all from a single location.  It also eliminates the necessity to manage multiple vendor relationships for translation.

Second, it allows our technology to fit seamlessly into SDL’s Global Information Management infrastructure, a model that we have always seen as an ideal solution for global businesses.

Finally, it reduces the barrier to entry for automated translation and global communication.  Over the past few years, Language Weaver has developed strategic partnerships and integrations to make automated translation more accessible - most recently, we partnered with SDL and RightNow Technologies.  This acquisition allows us to continue with our current business, and extends the integration into the GIM infrastructure making it easier for more companies to meet customer needs for multilingual content and communication.

From all of us at Language Weaver, we appreciate your continued support and we look forward to continuing our work as SDL-Language Weaver.

Onward,

Mark Tapling
CEO, SDL-Language Weaver

Language Weaver announces GlobalConnect 2.0, an enhanced integration with RightNow® CX, the customer experience suite designed to help organizations deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centers, all delivered via the cloud.

Language Weaver’s GlobalConnect^TM for RightNow Answers allows content managers and knowledgebase administrators to translate content with one click from within the RightNow CX agent desktop. GlobalConnect 2.0 now includes MultiSelect Translation, giving content managers the ability to translate multiple RightNow Answers on demand, directly within RightNow CX, and integrate with any existing publishing workflows.

GlobalConnectTM 2.0 provides customers with all the benefits of the original version, while delivering on additional requested features:

1. MultiSelect translation: Multiple Answers can be selected for translation through a single interface, allowing translation of multiple Answers in seconds.
2. Synchronous translations: Multiple Answers are translated in parallel, reducing the time required to translate multiple Answers.
3. Resume Translations: Choose to resume translations if you had been previously logged off of the RightNow CX Agent Desktop.
4. Seamless Integration Workflow: Leverage RightNow Answer rules and TrustScore to seamlessly integrate translation into your workflow.

Learn More & Watch Demo, click here.

This is an insert from Practical eCommerce by Kerry Murdock:

There are more consumers that don’t speak English than those that do. And how to reach those non-English-speaking prospects is our topic today. Merely translating a website is only part of the challenge. To help us understand all of the issues surrounding the language translation of an ecommerce site, we are joined by Swamy Viswanathan, vice president for Language Weaver, a translation company. He speaks with Practical eCommerce’s Kerry Murdock

To listen to podcast and view original article, click here>>