BBC World Service

The 2nd Annual LRC Best Global Website award was presented at the Localisation Research Centre's 9th Annual Localisation Conference, "Open Source Localisation".

The review panel for this award consisted of eminent experts in the area of marketing, web design, internationalisation and localisation from various different European companies. The judging panel agreed to present the 2004 LRC Best Global Website Award to the BBC World Service for their "Your Voice" websites:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/talking_point/default.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/interactivity/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/interactivity/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/forums/default.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/talking_point/default.stm

BBC World Service broadcasts programmes around the world in 43 languages and is available on radio and online at www.bbcworldservice.com. Its international online sites attract around 280 million page impressions and reach more than 16 million unique users a month.

The objective of the "Your Voice" sites is to enhance the news services of the World Service with a more interactive and connected forum of debates around key global issues. Activity in and between these languages facilitates debates across the Muslim world, and the voices emerging from such debates enrich World Service and news content in English and other languages.

Myra Hunt, Head of BBC World Service New Media, commented: "It is an honour to receive recognition for the skills and expertise of the Your Voices online team and to be able to play a vital role in bringing different voices across the world together to debate the issues that affect all our lives."

In explaining their decision, the judging panel commented that " among the reasons for this decision is the thoroughness of content localisation, the clear and user-friendly design, the respect of the natural language, the successful and flawless management of large amounts of very dynamic content, the success in promoting and creating cross-cultural dialogue, the careful choice of content to be published in each language according to editorial relevance for that market, the integration of audio elements, and the innovative use of dialogue-promoting tools (blogging software, for instance). All these factors result in an amazing and captivating website of great cross-cultural interest and service"

The panel unanimously decided to mention two sites for their outstanding contribution to multilingual and multicultural web design:

www.volldamm.es - The Volldamm website receives a special mention for its exceptional design and creativity, all perfectly communicated in all three languages

www.riberbar.com - This community site, submitted by Sinapsis, receives a special mention for its refreshing user-friendly design, the consistency of content quality in each language and the excellent management of frequent updates.

The LRC Best Global Website Award is sponsored by Euro RSCG Interaction.