Our Analysts' Insights

A webinar audience member recently asked about a country not included in our recent “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy – B2C” survey. His question was, “Where is Algeria?” After our half-joking response – “it’s in Northern Africa, east of Morocco” – we answered seriously that the country doesn’t appear on our list of most desirable online markets for economic and technological reasons.

Recently CSA Research launched the third edition of our oft cited “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy” research. We originated this topic of research in 2006 and continue to provide companies worldwide with the reliable data they need to plan and execute effective international growth strategies. When you encounter data like this from us or any other source, put on your data scientist hat and ask these two questions: what is the population and is it a representative sample?

With over 222 million Arabic-speaking web users, and an online economic opportunity of 2.5 trillion US dollars in 2020, Arabic is an attractive option for global brands. Nevertheless, it appears on far fewer sites than its potential would indicate. Part of the reason is that localizing into Arabic is not a simple task as it is not a single digital language for content marketing and customer experience. The languages used in the Arabic-speaking world for conversation, social networks, messaging, ...

An extremely popular gift for the holiday season is the family history DNA testing kit. Vendors such as MyHeritage and AncestryDNA advertise millions of users, increasing sales, and ever-improving analyses. No doubt, this week many people are eagerly awaiting the results of a test-tube full of saliva; wanting to confirm their expected heritage or to discover ancient roots – and expecting to have an absolute, definitive, and correct analysis of their ancestry. But it’s a bit like expecting a ma...

Ensuring that audiences in various parts of East and Southeast Asia fall in love with the games you create means adapting the characters – and the dialects they speak – appropriately for the region. Your goal is to avoid comical at best, or disastrous at worst, results for your gaming franchise.

Enterprises looking to extend their international footprint face many challenges. Selecting the languages that will give them the best market opportunities is one of these. Every year CSA Research publishes a ranking of the top online languages as determined by their economic opportunity (eGDP). Although this listing – based on macroeconomic factors – is a good predictor of overall investment, the choices individual organizations make are more complex.

A major translation event few language professionals heard of occurred in Xi’an, China on April 27. Sponsored by Xi’an International Studies University (XISU)’s Collaborative Innovation Center for Silk Road Language Services, the 2019 Annual Meeting of Postgraduate Degrees in Translation conference for educators in masters of translation and interpreting (MTI) programs in China brought together approximately 600 professors and localization professionals for a day of discussion about education...

Language is the one of the most personal components of the customer journey. Ideally, you would be able to use a single variant of any language for any country where it's spoken, but the reality is that sociocultural and political facts require supporting the right dialect of a language in your target markets. The starting point for most planners is, "Which language do they use in a given country?"

Winter sports enthusiasts – and the companies that sponsor them – are focused on the Olympics in, South Korea this month. This global sports event may prompt your organization to review jumping into South Korea for the first time. Or it may offer the chance to review your current investment level to prepare for the future. In either case, here are four actions you can take to support the executive decision-making process and, at the same time, gain more visibility for your team at the strategi...

The Japanese market is an attractive prospect for foreign companies that can succeed in it. In 2017, Japan accounted for 7.7% of the world's online economic potential, despite having just 3.2% of the global Internet-connected population ("Digital Opportunity: Top 100 Online Languages for 2017").