Global

At a top political and economic level, globalization is the process of denationalization of markets, politics and legal systems, i.e., the rise of the so-called global economy. The consequences of this political and economic restructuring on local economies, human welfare and environment are the subject of an open debate among international organizations, governmental institutions and the academic world. This portal does not take part in this debate or offer any information on this matter.

At a business level, we talk of globalization when companies decide to take part in the emerging global economy and establish themselves in foreign markets. First they will adapt their products or services to the final user's linguistic and cultural requirements. Then, they might take advantage of the Internet revolution and establish a virtual presence on the international marketplace with a multilingual corporate web site or even as an e-business.

In the context of this portal, globalization is the process of adapting software applications and web sites, so that they are linguistically and functionally suitable for use in more than one country. Overall, globalization requires a combination of linguistic, engineering and marketing knowledge that is not easily available.

Defining Globalization

In the Globalization, Internationalization, Localization and Translation (GILT) industry, we use globalization with a very specific meaning (usually to mean the process of adapting products for international marketing and distribution, including all of the business decisions needed to reach those markets). However, most of world doesn't understand globalization in the same way. If you ask the "average person on the street" what "globalization" means, you'll probably hear about sweat-shops, exploitation, slave labor, McDonalds and Coca-Cola, imperialism, colonialization, protests against the WTO, GATT (pick your favorite acronym), etc., etc.