Donna Parrish, third from the left, leads MultiLingual’s staff as publisher and owner of the company.

International business thrives in Sandpoint. Upstairs at 319 N. First, a talented team of 15 staff members edit, design and produce MultiLingual Computing & Technology, a magazine about global computing, particularly something called “localization.”

Publisher Donna Parrish, who recently bought the magazine from founder Seth Schneider, admits localization is not easy to explain. Localization is not boring, but it is complex. “Usually when I talk about our company, it is a race to see how many seconds people can pay attention before their eyes glaze over,” Parrish said.

Localization, an industry projected to gross $3.1 billion annually by 2007, prepares ideas, products or services from one location for presentation in another, primarily via the World Wide Web. Language and cultural differences are daunting, but they have to be overcome if people in Botswanaland, for example, are to understand why they might want American widgets.

Parrish’s magazine not only covers these challenges, but it addresses the math – technical language and equipment needed to send messages to other places on the planet. Subscribers to the magazine hail from 52 countries.

Features in the magazine, which has a circulation of 21,000, might cover developments in the Microsoft.NET world (for techies only!), the resurgence of Czech as a written language, or translation as a tool for the social services agencies in New York City. Schneider started MultiLingual in Clark Fork 13 years ago. Since, it has grown from “every once in a while” to eight issues annually, along with an annual index and supplements in every other issue focusing on topics in localization, such as a recent one entitled “Writing for Translation.

A website, www.multilingual.com, archives much of the information from previous issues. Every two weeks, the company publishes an electronic newsletter with 3,600 readers worldwide. MultiLingual Computing, Inc. was also the primary sponsor and organizer of “Localization World,” a global conference held in October in Seattle.

– Sandy Compton