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"TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH A SPEECH SYSTEM IN ITALY-ORANY OTHER PART OF EUROPE-TRANSLATIONS SHOULD BE DONE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL"
The European Union is an economic and political bloc of 27 independent countries, with a combined population of 501 million. While many of these nations share common policies on trade, agriculture, the environment, and regional development; joint actions on crime and terror; a central Parliament, bank, and court of justice; and even a single currency, they are far from sharing a common language In fact, among the countries that comprise the European Union, there are 23 official and working languages. There are also about 1 50 regional and minority languages, sublanguages, and dialects spoken by as many as 50 million people.
Add to that the 25 or so other countries - many of them former Soviet republics that formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - that are part of the continent but have not joined the European Union, and the numbers probably double.
For all of their diversity, across all of these countries one point is universally true: If customers are going to spend their hard-earned money on a company's products and services, then they expect the company to deliver information in their preferred languages. For companies doing business in Europe, appealing to customers in their own languages can lead to happier customers, more sales, and a better return on their marketing investments.
But with such linguistic diversity among countries - and sometimes within different parts of the same country - designing a speech system for the European market is certainly a daunting task. Communicating to such a diverse authence truly is as complex as it seems.
"You can't assume that you'll be able to reach an entire population with one application," says Jose Elizondo, senior principal of multhingual voice user interface design at Nuance Communications.
"The only thing you can assume is that everything you assume is absolutely wrong," adds Sue Ellen Reager, CEO of ©International Services, an Atlanta-based translation and localization firm.
Meeting the Locals
Nonetheless, many companies that try to expand their systems into Europe make the process harder than it has to be. But a number of things can be done to make the process less painful. The first,...