Latin America has changed – and it is largely thanks to China. A region once known for instability has sailed through the global financial crisis with falling poverty, a booming middle class and asset markets bubbling. This is due to a spectacular expansion of commodity-based trade.

Over the past decade, fast-growing emerging countries, such as Asia, India and Africa, have shown a nearly insatiable demand for the commodities that Latin America has in abundance like Argentine soya, Brazilian iron ore, Chilean copper and Peruvian gold. The change has been rapid: in 1999, trade between Latin America and China was a mere $8bn. By 2009, according to UN figures, it had grown to $130bn – 16 times that ten years ago. By comparison, bilateral trade with the US rose by just a half over the same period.

With the first overseas trip by Brazil’s new president, Dilma Rousseff, directed at China, the world could be witnessing the birth of one of the great commercial relationships of the future. “Brazil will export a lot of the strategic commodities that China needs and China will export manufactured goods and invest in assembly plans in Brazil,” says Charles Tang, head of the Brazil-China chamber of trade and industry. In 2009, China surpassed the US as Brazil’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 12.5 per cent of the Latin American country’s exports.

Of course every commodity needs to have its packaging and terms and conditions translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese to hit those markets, just as marketing campaigns need a localisation service based around the society and culture of Latin America and China, which are extremely different. When dealing with markets with such high potential, you need to choose an accurate and reliable translation service provider. Ask SanTranslate.

DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile communications operator, has developed an app called “menu translation”, which, as the name suggests, translates menus from Japanese into English, Chinese (both Madarin and Cantonese)and Korean.

It’s a very useful tool to help tourists explore the wonders of Japan; they only need to use their smartphones to take a picture and the app will show the English translation. There’s even an option to get extra information via Wikipedia if the user wants to know more about a particular term. The app is unfortunately unavailable for the iPhone but has been published on the Android market.

Being lost in translation is not a nice feeling, especially if you are trying to conduct business. To play safe, ask SanTranslate.

DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile communications operator, has developed an app called “menu translation”, which, as the name suggests, translates menus from Japanese into English, Chinese (both Madarin and Cantonese)and Korean.

It’s a very useful tool to help tourists explore the wonders of Japan; they need only use their smartphones to take a picture and the app will show the English translation. There’s even an option to get extra information via Wikipedia if the user wants to know more about a particular term. The app is unfortunately unavailable for the iPhone but has been published on the Android market.

Being lost in translation is not a nice feeling, especially if you are trying to conduct business. To play it safe, ask SanTranslate.

It’s important to remember however that it’s not the same everywhere. Internet users in India make up roughly 8% of the population, or just under 100m people, which led to Google in 3 February, 2009, starting a project to widen internet penetration in India. The Google Internet bus is a free, mobile cybercafé dreamed up by the search giant and run in association with BSNL, a large state-owned internet service provider (ISP). Until now it has covered over 43,000km and passed through 120 towns in 11 states. Google estimates that 1.6m people have been offered their first online experience as a result. Of those, 100,000 have signed up for an internet connection of their own. Google expects the number of users in India to triple over the next three years.

The reasons generally cited for India’s low internet penetration rate are expense, a poor infrastructure and meagre local content but this situation is being improved: BSNL already offers limited-use broadband for as little as $5 a month. Third-generation mobile networks are also getting better and are making data services available to Indians, crazy about mobile phones. As for content, the Hindi Wikipedia website recently passed a landmark 100,000 entries.

It is in fact a very important issue that Indians access information in Hindi, their native language as this way, they are able to make the most of their new internet experience. If you need a website translation service provider, SanTranslate is happy to help you!