Emerging markets are driving the Web globalization revolution.

Investment bankers use an acronym that is going to have a major impact on the future of the globalization industry: BRIC.

BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the four countries that pose the greatest opportunities for long-term growth among emerging markets. Of course, the key words are “long term” – these markets are anything but sure bets over the short term.

The localization industry has long used the acronym FIGS, which stands for French, Italian, German, Spanish, the most popular four languages chosen when companies enter Europe. CJK, for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, is also frequently used when expanding in Asia.

But I see BRIC gaining currency in the localization industry, because where investment bankers see growth so too do the multinationals who hope to capitalize on that growth. And while FIGS and CJK are geographically oriented, BRIC focuses purely on opportunity. This is great news for translators of Tamil, Chinese, Russian, and Portuguese and the vendors who learn to speak “BRIC.”

(NOTE: This essay is from the April issue of Global By Design -- on newsstands everwhere!)



By John Yunker
jyunker@bytelevel.com