CHRIS KULBACKI

chris, 19/07/2011 06:56,

No, I'm not turning this into a celebrity gossip blog, but there's one thing I noticed about Shakira that software developers would do well to learn from: her songs come out natively in two languages. The video clips are not just translated, the footage is actually recorded with Shakira singing in Spanish and in English. And regardless of whether you like her music or not, you have to give her the credit for this brilliant approach to producing music. If you have traveled to foreign countries you'll know that for a great majority of people their entire universe communicates in their native tongue. In Colombia your neighbors speak Spanish, the TV and the newspapers speaks Spanish, God speaks Spanish, Shakira speaks Spanish, and their software and websites must speak Spanish as well. Most of the Colombians don't care about the far away foreign countries that speak some strange tongue like English. Just like most of Americans don't care about the far away foreign countries that speak some strange tongue like Zulu.

The Spanish-speaking world is an immense market, and so are the markets in other non-English-speaking countries. So if you think your business could eventually expand to reach a multi-national audience, remember to design your software and websites with multi-lingual support from the core. Even if you won't be translating anything just yet, have that functionality inbuilt right from the start, or else later you'll have to spend a lot more time and money to re-do it. So next time you design a new piece of software, remember Shakira :).