Multilingualism and the management of small and medium-sized enterprises: the case of Sicilian firm websites and related localisation strategies

Abstract

According to the ELAN1 report, European firms lose a significant amount of revenue due to unsuccessful transactions, as a result of inadequate linguistic skills and intercultural competence, reinforcing the idea that multilingualism is still perceived as a communication barrier. In Italy, small and medium firms show a marked preference for website translations, even if, as pointed out by PIMLICO research in 2011, it is not possible to define these products as multilingual websites or localised ones. Firms show a tendency to reduce investments in foreign languages and to simplify the hiring processes of employees, since they prefer to rely on external services rather than providing training courses or hire specialists. Referring to this background of references and the evidence that emerged from an online questionnaire submitted to Sicilian small and medium firms (Di Gregorio and Benzo, 2016), the aim of this paper is to investigate the choices of firms to localise websites as part of a comprehensive linguistic policy.