Sixty-eight percent of GALA members have seen an increase in customers from Europe. GALA (2008)     In 1978, the European Commission began using Systran machine translation technology. TAUS     74% of multinational enterprises believe it is either important or most important to achieve increased revenues from global operations. CSU Chico (2007)     Language pairs handled by language service providers increased by 43 percent in the last two years. GALA (2008)     Nearly 86 percent of translation buyers outsource most or all of their translation needs to external language services providers. Common Sense Advisory (2007)     In Brazil, imported software must be supported by hardware developed locally. CSU Chico (2007)     Fifty-six percent of Europeans speak at least one language in addition to their mother tongues. Eurobarometer (2008)     The growth of the language services industry is shown in the average 10-19 percent growth in employees in 2007-2008. GALA (2008)     A share of 35 percent of Romanians consider that their household’s purchasing power has increased over the last five years. Eurobarometer (2008)     The EU Commission is the biggest translation consumer within the EU institutions. EU Commission     The earliest attempts at translation technology date back to efforts in the 1950s to automate the translation of Russian to English. TAUS     Due to EU expansion into Eastern Europe, Russian is now spoken as a second language by 5% of EU citizens. guardian.co.uk     Hispanics in the USA are 67% Mexican origin, 14.3% Central or Latin American, 8.5% Puerto Rican, 3.7% Cuban, and 6.6% from other origins. U.S. census (2000)     About 28 percent of Europeans speak two foreign languages. Eurobarometer (2008)     In the last two years, forty-two percent of GALA members have accommodated a new language pair never handled before.  GALA (2008)     In 1977, TAUM Méteo began using machine translation for Canadian weather bulletins English to French 45K words a day with little post-editing. TAUS     Number of words translated on average every day by GALA members: 16,736,100.00 GALA (2008)     Software marketed in France must be in French. CSU Chico (2007)     By 2009, Priceline will derive less than 30 percent of its revenue from the US; Google less than one half. JupiterResearch (2008)     The EU enlargement in 2004 increased its official languages from 11 to 20. European Commission     During the next five years, the US will add about 20 million Internet users.  Meanwhile, Western Europe will gain 40 million, and China 90 million. JupiterResearch (2008)     65% of multinational enterprises believe localization is either important or very important for achieving higher company revenues. CSU Chico (2007)     In 1960, the US Air Force used IBM-developed Mark II language translator to translate Russian to English. TAUS     The EU has 23 official languages and three alphabets. European Commission     The first article on machine translation appeared in The New York Times May 31, 1949. TAUS     More than 77 percent of GALA member companies have increased their number of employees in the last year. GALA (2008)     Companies should start with English on their websites and then move to Japanese with its 13.2% of world electronic GDP. Common Sense Advisory (2007)     52% of internet consumers will buy ONLY at websites where the information is presented in their language. Common Sense Advisory (2006)     The number of pages translated for the EU Commission in 2004 was 1,270,586 for the total number of languages. EU Commission     The Journal of Machine Translation was first launched in 1954. TAUS         In the state of California, 19 million people speak English, 8 million people speak Spanish, and 800,000 people speak Chinese. MLA (2005)     In late 2007, the European Commission made its multilingual translation memory in 22 languages accessible to the public in 22 languages. European Commission     In the past year, work volume has increased by an average 10-19 percent among GALA members. GALA (2008)     In 1987, the world's first instantaneous translation of speech by a computer was demonstrated by British Telecom's Research Laboratories. TAUS     More than 86 percent of GALA companies have increased work volume in the last year. GALA (2008)     The hispanic purchasing power was $700 million in 2004 and is expected to reach almost $1 trillion by 2010. HispanTelligence (2004)     The US hispanic population was 40.4 million people in 2004 and is expected to reach almost 60.4 million by 2020. Pew Research Report (2005)     Germany will be the largest European market in 2011, with 58 million online users, followed by the UK with 46 million. JupiterResearch (2008)     The average number of languages for the top 10 global brands is almost 30. JupiterResearch (2008)     The leading global websites now support an average of 35 languages. John Yunker     The market for outsourced language services was over US $9 billion worldwide in 2006, growing at 7.5 percent per year to US $12billion in 2010. Common Sense Advisory (2006)     Forty-two percent of the global online population will be in Asia in 2011. JupiterResearch (2008)     There are six languages that make up 88 percent of the "global wallet" for online spending. Common Sense Advisory (2007)     In 1997, AltaVista Babelfish were launched on the Internet using Systran, with 500K requests a day. TAUS     The total of online users in China in 2009 will be 234 million. JupiterResearch (2008)     Looking forward to 2011, India’s online population will be significantly higher than will that of any European country. JupiterResearch (2008)     eBay has a presence in 39 markets around the world and is available in 30 languages eBay (2008)     A total of 1,600 people work for the EU directorate general for translation, making it the largest EU department. guardian.co.uk     In 1996, Systran began offering free translation of small texts on the web. TAUS     There are 206 million native speakers of Arabic, making it the 5th most widely spoken language in the world The Ethnologue     Thirty-seven percent of all large US companies have not translated their website content into any other language. JupiterResearch (2008)     While legal issues restrain 80% of companies when entering a new market, only 11% see it as a substantial barrier. CSU Chico (2007)