Ask HN: Which language localizations first?

6 points·pace··9 comments

We started a successful site generating lots of organic traffic. We already localized to English, German, Spanish and Chinese. Which language should be the next in your opinion (regarding highest reach combined with strong Internet usage and purchasing power)?

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What does your data say? Check your web analytics, support tickets, etc.

I have no stats regarding "purchasing power" but looking at List of languages by number of native speakers[1], the obvious candidates would be French, Portuguese and Arabic

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...

thanks. good resource!

Just curious, how did you go about doing localization: who did you hire, how long did it take, and how much did it cost?

How do you provide support for your audiences using localized versions?

How do you manage your business (sales, taxes, local laws compliance) on these markets?

our site is mainly about content, so currently there's no support, sales, taxes and minor local law compliance

but we tried to integrate third parties only with extensive language support

we used rails' l18n gem and started with two languages -- just in order to setup the app in a way that allows easy localizations

we hired people from various market places. time and cost depend but you pay for a smaller site between 50 and 200$ und it takes 1-2 days.

You could do what Amazon.com did and expand into countries based on their GDP.

Japanese & Korean.

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