Cultural awareness

I had a chance to sit down and talk with Arun Pereira, author of The Culturally Customized Web Site: Customizing Web Sites for the Global Marketplace recently. He has studied the use of the web by different cultural groups, and come to the conclusion that translation is only a part of the picture; a website should be presented differently to an individualistic American vs. a collectivist Asian. I found that interesting, as I hadn't thought about it much before. Applying that thought to Drupal, the t() function becomes less important, though still essential, and theming becomes more important.