why there isnt more multilingual support

Ian Landsman • April 6, 2007

Interesting post by Alex asking why more software doesn't support non English languages. I think what he's leaving out is the significant cost of doing it. HelpSpot for instance is setup to handle different language packs, but it just doesn't make financial sense to do it (yet). Hiring translators, keeping the translations up to date with changes and so on. Most importantly is the increased costs of marketing in these other languages. There's not much point in having language packs unless you start marketing to those countries.

To take it one step further, what about support? If I'm offering a Spanish version and marketing to Spanish users won't I need Spanish speaking support? I think the cost of all these things is really the reason more software companies don't support multiple languages, at least until they reach a certain size where hiring more people to manage it makes financial sense.