The 2^nd Annual LRC Best Global Website Award

Originally published in December 2004 issue of Localisation Focus. To learn more about Localisation Focus, click here.

The Localisation Research Centre’s 9th Annual Localisation Conference “Open Source Localisation”, at the University of Limerick in Ireland, was the venue for the presentation of the 2nd Annual LRC Best Global Website Award, sponsored by Europe’s largest interactive marketing agency, Euro RSCG Interaction.

 

The aim of the Best Global Website award is to find Europe’s most innovative multilingual and multicultural website and to raise the awareness for these issues amongst web developers and policy makers. The award attracted a large number of entries from many different types of organisations ranging from relatively low-scale community sites to extremely high-tech commercial sites. The 2004 edition is the second year of this award, which was initially established as part of the European Union European Localisation Exchange Centre (ELECT) project.

The review panel for this award consisted of eminent experts in the area of marketing, web design, internationalisation and localisation from various different European companies. The panel highlighted the importance of the award as a significant encouragement to business people and web developers to integrate multilingual and multicultural mechanisms into their website designs.

Members of the 2004 expert panel were:

-      Alasdair Scott (Creative Partner, Filter)

-      Scott Rodgers (Creative Director, Euro RSCG Interaction)

-      Mario De Bortoli (Localisation Specialist Euro RSCG Interaction)

-      Chiara Galvan (Translator and Project Manager SOGET)

-      Mats Wennerholm & Premton Gervalla (www.modersmal.net - 2003 award winners)

 

The panel agreed to include the following areas as part of their review:

-         Number of languages.

-         Regularity of update schedule.

-         Excellent quality at all levels (linguistic, content, design, usability, programming).

-         Cultural compliance.

 

The 2004 LRC Best Global Website Award sponsored by Euro RSCG Interaction.

This year the judging panel agreed to present the 2004 LRC Best Global Website Award to the BBC World Service "Your Voice" websites:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/talking_point/default.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/interactivity/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/interactivity/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/forums/default.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/talking_point/default.stm

 

BBC World Service broadcasts programmes around the world in 43 languages and is available on radio and online at www.bbcworldservice.com. Its international online sites attract around 280 million page impressions and reach more than 16 million unique users a month.

 

The “Your Voice” websites were launched in Spanish, Russian (see fig 1), Arabic, Persian and Urdu in October 2003 with the objective of making online debates between people in different countries possible throughout the world.

 

Fig1. "Your Voice" Russian Edition

 

The objective of the “Your Voice” sites is to enhance the news services of the World Service with a more interactive and connected forum of debates around key global issues. Activity in and between these languages facilitates debates across the Muslim world, and the voices emerging from such debates enrich World Service and News content in English and other languages.

 

The sites are administered by their own teams to define the editorial direction and generate content. These teams meet regularly to ensure that language isn’t a barrier to sharing good content – something generated by Arabic may be as relevant, editorially, to Persian or Russian. The aim is to ensure that a truly global story is shared and read by a global audience in their own language.

 

Fig. 2 "Your Voice" Persian Edition

 

LRC director Reinhard Schäler was quoted as saying: "The judging panel was impressed by the clear and user friendly design, respect for native language and success in promoting and creating cross cultural dialogue."

 

Myra Hunt, Head of BBC World Service New Media, commented: "It is an honour to receive recognition for the skills and expertise of the Your Voices online team and to be able to play a vital role in bringing different voices across the world together to debate the issues that affect all our lives."

 

In explaining their decision, the judging panel commented that “among the reasons for this decision is the thoroughness of content localisation, the clear and userfriendly design, the respect of the natural language, the successful and flawless management of large amounts of very dynamic content, the success in promoting and creating cross-cultural dialogue, the careful choice of content to be published in each language according to editorial relevance for that market, the integration of audio elements, and the innovative use of dialogue- promoting tools (blogging software, for instance). All these factors result in an amazing and captivating website of great cross-cultural interest and service”.

The panel and the LRC congratulate the BBC World Service on winning the award and wish them every success for the future and evolution of their website.

The LRC would like to thank the awards’ sponsor, Euro RSCG Interaction for their continuing commitment to the award and for all the support they provided.

 

The LRC would also like to acknowledge and thank every site that entered and supported this award. The span of entries, ranging from small community driven websites to expansive multinational backed sites shows the importance of presenting and promoting multilingual and multicultural websites on the web.