Firms must close language gaps to keep up with Web

Companies need to recruit more staff with language skills in order to set up foreign language versions of their web sites, a multilingual project management company has warned.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

Email(Required)

OptOut

From time to time, we will send you emails about selected products, events and services from Personnel Today and OHW+ - but you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please tick this box.

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Δ

Image Partnership says research shows there are 192 million non-English-speaking web users in the world. It says the proportion of foreign language speakers is set to grow rapidly with English becoming a minority language. British and US companies cannot afford to ignore the importance of key languages, including Spanish, French and Portuguese.

“By 2005, English-speaking web users will represent only 30 per cent of the total global audience. Therefore, any company wanting to maintain and reinforce their corporate image and reach a worldwide audience, will need a multilingual web site,” said managing director Paul Hutchings.