Global Challenges: Languages

The Dutch East India Company made its fortune with a number of different trades: notably the tulip mania in 1637 that allowed the Dutch East India Company to be valued in the trillions of dollars while operating in dozens and dozens in countries (all of this according to Wikipedia). They operated globally and generated massive amounts of wealth and were a dominant economic force for almost two hundred years.

Global companies that operate today have a lot of resources that didn’t exist then (the internet – chief among them). But one of the challenges that remains an obstacle to all companies is language. It is a barrier to global collaboration and to the more than 60,000 multinational companies at work today, that barrier is a daily reality.

It also makes an impact on all of us, since the languages of business are quickly becoming a determinate of the languages used globally. The countries of dominant economic strength are turning up as some of the most commonly published languages, as well.

The flow of knowledge between parent companies and subsidiaries, between branches and disciplines, the type of fluidity required to generate great open innovation repositories has slowed. Perhaps the only way to keep up is to invest in automatic user generate content translation by machine (and verified by humans) as IdeaScale has done until automatic translation is accurate enough to make that process effortless and efficient. But in the meantime, understanding the digital landscape is key to aligning business strategies with language realities. If most blogs are being written in Portuguese, perhaps it’s time to translate corporate blogs into Portuguese, as well.

IdeaScale has invited researcher Sergey Lobachev to give an overview of what the digital language landscape looks like: what languages are appearing most often in print, in blogs, on websites, and more. To register for this complimentary webinar, please click here.