According to the content of websites and how users perceive them, without taking into consideration their technical aspect we can distinguish between centralized and decentralized websites. The design of a particular website may look like one big website divided into local, domestic and international sections (websites). This may happen if different countries have uploaded their own pages on the same website. Thus we will have web addresses which are based on a uniform content structure and graphical design and follow the same pattern. If we accept that interconnected websites look like one and the same website, it will be the URLs through which their technical structure will be revealed. In other cases, though, the design may differ slightly, e.g. in 2002 a Vietnamese company named Fo allowed more freedom to the site designers, who with the help of a Vietnamese Translator agency changed drastically its graphics and layout. Normally, there are some difficulties when a customer tries to find a local site with a clear domain name, but this is not true for isolated websites for different target countries. If there are no links from one website to another, or from the international or domestic website, it may be difficult for some people to find the different local websites and they may easily give it up.
Identifying the connection between the content and the language choices may require looking into some companies as examples and Armunt, Carpagio and Dramon are the three that will be discussed. When a hierarchical structure for the pages is built the information in the sites may be classified in various ways and the main classification criterion that we have singled out is the target group. Furthermore, the content whose purpose is not to target any particular audience provides information to visitors about how the company develops. Several types of documents are to be found on these websites such as press releases, newsletters, price lists, timetables and brochures, but other interactive services may also be available and their number is constantly growing. In the period between 2000 and 2004 all the food companies expanded their websites to cover their target countries. As Russia was the country in Europe that they exported most of their production to, they used an independent Certified Russian Translator organization in the making of the Russian version of their websites. At the beginning, Carpagio and Dramon had only a global website, while Armunt had a domestic website as very few languages could be covered because it was too expensive.
International, local and domestic are the languages used on the websites, which is quite similar to the classification applied to website types. For example, the official language/s of the company’s home country, like www.eric.fr, are also its domestic languages. Dramon began with one single site in English by the year 2004 it had developed an extensive French domestic site with the help of a French Translator association which was functioning simultaneously with the English one. As the international website was in English, there were many links on the local French website that redirected to it. English was the language that Carpagio’s first website was in, but later its websites were enriched with domestic languages. In a statement to the press two companies Crimprog and Fattosh answered to the accusations that they used only English on their websites because it was easily understood by most people and thus answered the aroused publicity in 2003. Their policy was soon reconsidered and their websites were also written in the languages of their home country as a result.
