Email archiving is a worldwide application for many organizations. The result is the need for double byte support for languages such as Chinese and Japanese. Before you make Chinese and Japanese a must-have requirement, consider that:
- Chinese and Japanese (and other tokenized/symbol-based languages) are very difficult to index and search properly.
- After English, your next languages should probably be French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian.
Keep in mind that localization for email archiving means more than translating screen text and documentation. It means the search index must be tested to return accurate queries. Few (if any) of the popular index products can accurately index tokenized languages in all cases. This leads to heavy support calls and customer frustration.
Bob Spurzem In addition to his role as Ferris analyst, Bob is director of product marketing at Iron Mountain Digital Division, which was recently purchased by Autonomy.