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Every day you hear it on the news, you read
it in the papers, you overhear people
talking about it… and in every single
instance the word globalization seems to
have a different meaning. So, what is
globalization?
At a top political and economic level,
globalization is the process of
denationalization of markets, politics and
legal systems, i.e., the rise of the
so-called global economy. The consequences
of this political and economic restructuring
on local economies, human welfare and
environment are the subject of an open
debate among international organizations,
governmental institutions and the academic
world. This portal does not take part in
this debate or offer any information on this
matter.
At a business level, we talk of
globalization when companies decide to take
part in the emerging global economy and
establish themselves in foreign markets.
First they will adapt their products or
services to the final user's linguistic and
cultural requirements.
Then, they might take advantage of the
Internet revolution and establish a virtual
presence on the international marketplace
with a multilingual corporate web site or
even as an e-business.
In the context of this portal, globalization
is the process of adapting software
applications and web sites, so that they are
linguistically and functionally suitable for
use in more than one country. Overall,
globalization requires a combination of
linguistic, engineering and marketing
knowledge that is not easily available.
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