Atlanta firms are recognizing the need for multilingual services in what he calls a remarkable change from the not too distant past when U.S. companies had little or no qualms about using English with their foreign customers abroad, according to Victor Warners, vice president of the Omni Resource Group Inc.
Mr. Warners cites as evidence a survey his company conducted of GlobalFax readers. The survey was prepared by the language management company and appeared on the cover/sponsorship page of the June 22 issue of GlobalFax, which currently is disseminated weekly by fax and e-mail to 5,000 recipients in the metro Atlanta area.
The survey asked respondents to indicate whether foreign markets are important to their company’s business success and if multilingual services are a prerequisite for growth. It also asked the respondents to point out the variety of elements requiring multilingual versions such as annual reports, employee publications, multimedia presentations, technical documentation and software.
Fifty surveys were completed. Ninety-three percent of the respondents considered foreign markets to be significant to their company’s success and 89% viewed multilingual services as a prerequisite for their company’s growth.
Fifty-one percent of the respondents indicated that they conduct business around the world with 18% and 16%, respectively, focusing their activities on the Americas and Europe. The remaining 15% were involved in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The companies also indicated that translation services by themselves no longer filled all their needs and that they considered additional services such as desktop publishing, multimedia, software localization and consulting capabilities to be important.
For more information, Mr. Warners may be reached by calling (404) 607-8500; fax, (404) 607-7227. Omni Resource Group’s web site may be found at http://www.