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All These Languages! Localization and Multilingualism Online
January 20, 2008 - 13:33 — Stephanie Booth
As a bilingual person, I’ve always been very sensitive to the importance of language in people’s lives — and on the internet. I’ve gathered on my site a bunch of pointers to my musings on the subject over the past year.
Enough about me — I just wanted to give you a bit of context.
I’d like to facilitate a discussion about the issues surrounding languages on the internet. Here are some ideas, for starters:
- how important is it to internationalize your website/tool?
- what are the problems we bump into with localisation?
- doesn’t everybody speak English?
- how can we create spaces where it is OK to use more than one language at a time?
- how do we profile language skills?
- what processes and tools do we have for translation?
- beyond translating an interface, what is the “cost” (ressources, skills) of localisation?
- …
This discussion will happen informally between 10:30 and 11:00 (morning break) on Friday. I will communicate the location on Thursday.
Discussion moderator:
9 persons signed up
Comments
Great topic! Many of us come up against the reality of having to choose between short-term efficaciousness (local language) and long-term connections(English) for our web communications. As a bilingual in CH, I share your concerns and will happily give a helping hand in the discussion. Hope to see you there.
On our plattform http://www.swissinfo.ch languages are very important: Editorial content is produced in nine languages – English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. We internationalize our website every day.
We know that most of our users speak and understand several languages (at least two). Therefore we us English video on a Chinese or Spanish site.
All our editors speak several languages. We do a lot of translation work. The translations have to be done by humans, not by robots.
Our challenge is to choose topics and issues that are interesting for the different segments of our readership. A Chinese user is not interested in the same topics as an American or a user from Brezil. This is an editorial challenge, not a technical one.
http://www.swissionfo.ch
The internet information platform www.swissinfo.ch offers up-to-date news and reports about Switzerland with text, audio, pictures and video. Our main editorial priorities are politics, business, social affairs, travel and culture as well as science and technology.
Our specials provide more complete coverage of current issues on www.swissinfo.ch. The content is especially prepared and researched for an international audience. Radio and television reports from other units of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation are available on www.swissinfo.ch and can be called up at any time.
Just a note to say that although this discussion didn’t make the cut for the programme, I’d like to suggest an informal meet-up of interested people. I’ll have a look at the schedule tomorrow and e-mail you.
As both my workshop on blogging and my open stage speech were accepted, in addition to the fact I’ll be live-blogging and running around to find sponsors and attendees for my event Going Solo, I’m not going to prepare the discussion much. We’ll just meet and have a very informal chat around these linguistic issues (in my experience, this works very well — there is loads to say and share on the topic!)
Hi,
I didn't see this before today, and am very interested in this topic. But as I understood you'll be conducting it informally, so I will try to find you tomorow.
We will meet at 10:30 (morning break) outside the hall on the right, where there are some sofas. Go out the main entrance of the hall, and walk around the hall until you're almost at the other side.
Look out for pink hair if you're lost.
Hi,
I will not be at the conference (I’m in Montreal, Canada) but I am very interested in these topics. For all it’s worth, here are my answers.
how important is it to internationalize your website/tool?
Very important
what are the problems we bump into with localisation?
For my business website: none really for the moment. A main criteria in choosing a content management system for my website was that it had to be able to manage more than one languages. i.e. the French version must not be treated like the "poor relative" of the English version (bad accents conversion, mistranslated functionalities,, etc...)
For my business blog: finding a blog publishing platform/template that manages more than one language.
doesn’t everybody speak English?
A lot of people speak a little English, but not everyone. Even the ones that do will not necessarily make their searches in English, or if they do, they might not use the right or the most popular terms. Also, if they don't instantly understand what they are reading, they will just quit the page and proceed somewhere else, even if they were on the right track. So English is not "THE" solution.
how can we create spaces where it is OK to use more than one language at a time
Very hard. Not sure yet if it’s harder for the creator or for the reader…
how do we profile language skills
Certainly not from the browser’s language
what processes and tools do we have for translation?
Beyond personal knowledge, online dictionaries and online searches
beyond translating an interface, what is the “cost” (ressources, skills) of localisation
Haven’t thought about it yet.
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