Interplay of language and culture in global E-commerce: a comparison of five companies' multilingual websites

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the results of a pilot study on the interplay of language and culture in global e-commerce, comparing the multilingual websites of five multinational companies, namely, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. These five companies' websites in English are compared with the translated websites in both Simplified Chinese (SC) and Traditional Chinese (TC) in terms of contents and interfaces. The differences as well as similarities among the original websites in English and the translated websites in Simplified and Traditional Chinese are analyzed for the addition, omission and retention of linguistic and cultural elements. The results suggest that the adaptation to native language and local culture of the target audience and market is one of the important quality indicators for multilingual websites. The results also show that language and culture are inseparable for developing quality multilingual websites in global e-commerce.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Natural language

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Theory and methods; Evaluation/methodology

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Performance