Also,I think compnies need a presence in the country too…this doesn’t have to be physical but the company needs to be part of the community they are serving. This could be through active involvement with the userbase or through sponsorship or donations to better the community in generl. Personally, I think companies like Yahoo, Google et al need to be held accountable for giving back to communities other than the bay area or some feel-good cause of the week.

I think the bigger question is that of culture. In today’s world of social networking almost all Web 2.0 websites have a community and culture aspect. The question I ask is would Facebook or MySpace be successful in the US if they had first launched in India or Brazil? My first thought would be that Americans would be reluctant to join these networks if there was already a strong Indian or Brazilian culture infused into the online communities. So does it make sense to take an online community that has a strong American cultural aspect associated with it and localize it for Italy or Germany, or is it better to rebrand the site and create a new site with similar features?

-Aseem

However, I think, if done correctly, a site like YouTube or Flickr can be extremely successful when translated into different languages/cultures.

We all agree, though, that you can’t achieve that by simply translating the small snippets of text that appear on your site. You have to re-create the site essentially from the ground up. You have to hire people that are actually fluently bi-lingual to perform the translations manually. You have to present new site designs based on the cultural sensitivities of the country you are trying to target.

If you are simply going to translate text excerpts, then there is no point in even trying. The majority of countries these sites are targeting are, for the most part, bi-lingual. The majority of the users from those countries will speak/write/read English better than they can probably read the poor translations.