sxsw2008: Core Conversation: Opening the Web to Linguistic Realities

Why is it that even the most popular websites assume that you would only want to receive information in one language at a time, based on what country you’re logging in from? Or that most content generation software still struggle with the notion of producing content in multiple languages? Many people speak and understand more than one language – perhaps more than we truly realise. The onset of globalism and immigration has created an even more prominent trend of multilingualism amongst the world’s inhabitants. How can the World Wide Web and its core technologies keep up? How can we shift our biased perspectives?”

Stephanie Troeth Director of Interactive Technology & Solutions, CloudRaker
Stephanie Booth Web Consultant & Commentator, Climb to the Stars

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how do you handle multiple languages on a site
how do you allow your user to choose in a comfortable way
do you decide for your user
language detection in your browser, can set preferred languages
resolving the language via search words or input
add directions in the error 404 messages
you dont choose one language, you choose languages how you
lisa – org?
wikipedia is doing it right
try not to do things symmetrical, just get what you can. incremental process
worldwide lexicon – service that you contribute your site
is a summary of the info enough to help the user? in lieu of translating everything
how invested is your audience in getting the content
having more than one lang on a page is not such a bad idea, especially if your audience can parse the info better that way
siesmic – video tool that allows you to tag what lang it is
pootle – translation tool?
open x
you can designate language in the code

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Tags: sxsw2008, pootle, siesmic, dotsub, translation