Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, April 6, 2007:
Why There Isn’t More Multilingual Support
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.
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.
Discussion
Hi Ian,
I'm going to bookmark your answer for future reference (I would hate for you to say 'I told you so' lol).
You know this could also be a good reason for you to learn Spanish 
Joking aside, from your perspective it does makes sense to keep HelpSpot in English only. My article was mainly for people who are just starting to develop their web applications.
Ultimately I think it all depends on your personal goals for the product you created.
Thanks for sharing your point of view. It's always appreciated 
Created by Alex Williams on 04.07.2007 11:44 pm
I am just finished localizing my own application (hosted). I wish I had done it the first time around!
Besides translating every single screen of the application, each locale has its own specifics that need to be addressed. Numbers (1,000.00 vs 1 000,00) and dates (mm/dd/yy vs dd/mm/yy) displays are the most obvious ones. Add timezones, VAT, payment processors and you end up revising most of the code base.
I have the chance to have a partner on the other side of the Atlantic who will market our services there. I would not have done it otherwise. It's a painful process!
Created by Jean Moniatte on 04.08.2007 11:28 pm