Communication as a key to global business

Communication is the tie that binds our global community. It must be conducted in such a way that its content is accessible to all and respectful of local languages and cultures. The idea of English as a lingua franca, as the universal medium of communication among the people of the world, is extremely appealing, but while its role is important, we believe that it is essentially a fallback, a second best. We will maintain that localisation must be the key enabler for making connections in the digital world and will provide arguments based on mainstream localisation practice for those wondering whether they should localise their digital content. We will argue that current mainstream efforts are not enough to deal with the exploding volume of digital content that requires localisation into an ever-growing number of languages. We will put forward a case for a new approach, development localisation, and introduce the Global Initiative for Local Computing (GILC).