While the globalisation of the world is a fact of life in business today, the language barrier remains a major obstacle to communicating with partner, suppliers or customers from a multitude of countries.

Speaking and delivering the same language is a big headache for companies with a multinational market; Imagine a customer-facing Web portal that delivers Web 2.0 applications across different countries.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) thus face the challenge of ensuring accurate translation of their content displayed by the Web applications on the respective portals or websites.

In a region like Asia alone, there are literally hundreds of languages that may be needed for a host of online applications and even documents. At one level, think of physical invoices, receipts and bills that have to be translated and digitised for cross-border communications between companies and their overseas partners, suppliers and customers.

Online, there are web portals and entire databases of content — say, an online banking interface or a repository of millions of online auction items — that have to be translated on the fly to cater to the diverse language needs of international end users.

Companies want to communicate effectively — Web 2.0 style — with new markets in new countries, without worrying about the language barrier. Gaining instant access to new market means faster time to market – and faster business growth even if your new customers don’t always speak the same language as you.