1. eContent Localisation in Europe Presented by David Worlock, Electronic Publishing Services Ltd. 18 th October, 2000

2. Why is localisation important for Europe’s eContent players? Gateway to participation in the global internet economy Growing linguistic diversity of digital content customer base (44% of the total global internet population do not speak English) (Source: Global Reach) Europe must seize the burgeoning opportunity: growth of European and Asian e-commerce revenues now outpaces the US

3. How does Europe measure up? Primary research: –examined the web sites of 347 European organisations (b2b, b2c, public sector) What we measured: –Depth: degree of localisation on a scale of 0 to 3 –Breadth: number of languages used - leading to an average no. of languages per site for each country Depth x Breadth = the eContent localisation effectiveness index

4. Web site localisation: performance of individual countries In 1997 English represented more than 90% of web content; now that proportion is less than 70%

5. Key drivers and barriers Globalisation Customer demand Market growth Competitive advantage The content gap “Write once, use many” Scale for niche content Low awareness of value and process High costs Organisational barriers Legacy technology Technology gap Skills gap DriversBarriers

6. Positive findings Cultural and linguistic diversity of the EU can be leveraged as a centre for world-class localisation expertise Localisation is already established in Europe (especially in b2b) Europe has deep publishing roots and rich content assets to exploit eContent localisation is the key to huge market opportunities

7. Negative findings Cross-border e- commerce is poorly developed Multilingual publishing models are rudimentary Europe trails the US in some language technology areas There are poor links between language services suppliers and eContent publishers

8. 1 Raise awareness 2 Content Promote availability of content for localisation 3 People Guarantee the European skills base 4 Knowledge Disseminate best practice 5 Tools Harness existing resources and support R&D eContent Localisation 6 Monitor Monitor evolving challenges and benchmark progress Recommendations for action