While we are here sending messages in English, there are at least one third of the worlds population who can't read them, for English is not even a second language for them.

I refer to China.

More people in China are logging on to the net every day, but most of what has been put up on the net is in English, this can be very frustrating for them.

Very few web sites I visit, and I visit very many in any given week, don't have any way of giving translations into other languages, and I feel, this is a thing that webmasters have got to address as soon as possible.

On my own website, www.ebook-sales.com I have inserted a script code at the top of every html page to offer Alta Vista's translationservice - 'Babel Fish'. This offers translation into eight languages at present, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, as well as European languages. As more languages become available automatically the script will activate them.

Since I put "Babel Fish' on my site I have noticed in the stats on my server that more people are logging on from China!

This problem of translation for web-sites I recently wrote up about in a article filed with IdeaMarketers.com called "Reach Out And Touch Billions", no sooner it was filed within minutes it was being read by users of the service, usually editors.

Take a look at the article and let me have some comments, and if you know of other translation services, why not give me some details about them for others to benefit from?

Question 1.

Should it be a mandatory requirement that a translation should be made available for web-sites - incuding blogs?

Question 2.

Now that there is the technology available, should search engine's like Google and Yahoo rank sites lower if they have no translation available?

(Therefore rank sites higher if they do provide translation?)

Question 3.

Should all email service providers be made to provide translation services for all emails?

(Do you know of any that do?)