Internationalis(z)ation

Source: http://www.fourthsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/global-apple-500×398.jpg

1. Where did this week’s presentation leave gaps?

On the slide titled ‘Locale-specific Items’, only Language and Currency were mentioned. However, there are more things that relate to what locale you are in. For example:

Search Engines

Google is used in a lot of different countries, but someone living in Spain probably isn’t going to be interested in websites ending with ‘.co.nz’. Because of this, depending on your locale, you can connect to a different Google site. For example, the aforementioned Spanish people can use https://www.google.es/ to search for things.

Operating System

All the way back in 1989, Fujitsu began producing and selling a PC system in Japan called FM towns, which had its own operating system. A more recent example would be Neokylin, which many computers sold this decade in China come pre-installed with. However, it has a rather interesting resemblance to Windows XP. I’ve even heard it described as ‘rip-offy‘.

Keyboard/Keyboard Layout

Many countries use different keyboard layouts. For example, on a French keyboard, instead of the top line beginning with ‘qw’ it begins with ‘az’. Also, since the Russian alphabet has 33 characters (as opposed to the English alphabet which has 26), a Russian keyboard has extra keys that don’t exist on keyboards designed for English users.

Russian Keyboard Layout

Source: http://www.softcorporation.com/products/cyrillic/lay1.gif

2. Which types of businesses would benefit the most from internationalisation?

Retail Websites/Businesses and Postage Companies

I’ll be including both of these types of businesses in this example since they both more or less benefit for the same reason; a larger marketshare. If a business based in New Zealand were able to set-up a website and start receiving orders from people in Australia (or any other country for that matter), they could make much more profit as they’d have more customers. Likewise, a postage company could make more money (as long as they could afford it initially) if they were able to post packages and letters to different countries.

Software Developers

If a company that is developing a piece of software is able to produce that software in multiple languages that are commonly spoken around the world (such as Chinese-Mandarin, Russian, German, French, etc), then they’d be far more likely to have native speakers of these languages using their software, thus widening their marketshare and increasing their profit.

3. Which kind of countries would benefit the most from internationalisation?

Multi-Cultural Countries/Countries With More Than 1 Language

Countries with a range of cultures, ethnicities or languages, such as Canada and Australia could benefit a lot by having a close relation with the countries that the cultures and ethnicities they have come from. It would help strengthen ties with other countries, which in turn means that a country would have allies.

Likewise, a country that has more than 1 official language, like the USA or New Zealand, or a country that simply has more than 1 commonly spoken language would benefit a lot from internalisation, as they could attract more tourists by appealing to people who want to try going to a country that seems interesting and diverse. They could also attract people who may want to live and work in such a country, and as long as the nation could support that, it could benefit them economically.

Countries With Small Populations

If a country has a small population, it can benefit quite a lot from internationalisation due to the tourism that can result from it. Tourism could increase a countries GDP, and so benefit the country. Having people of multiple ethnicities and cultures coming to live in such a small country could also help to diversify the gene pool in the country, which would benefit the population as a whole as time went on due to natural selection pressures.