Multilingual Sites

Andreas Ravn from namics.com just gave an interesting speech at Web2Expo in Berlin.

Some points that are remarkable to me: abbreviations, tag clouds, words without context are specific issues in multilingual environments. It's an additional challenge to actually identify the language.

Good or bad translation affects the author's credibility – that can be your own, if you are centrally talking to an international audience. Or it can be your partner's (and your author is your partner – or maybe even your customer) credibility; that means high responsibility.
It's not only about credibility, it's also about confidence, like and dislike, authority and reputation and respect – especially if you are an international enterprise talking to it's multilingual employees.
I should try to draw a model capturing and illustrating these complexities.

Several approaches to deal with the multilingual challenge are:
* laissez faire: contributors choose their language according to whom they want to talk. That's only feasible if you're working in a very decentralized environment and can afford to loos control.
* common ground: pick one language (eg english, or russian or spanish) and stick to it – the common thing then will be, that it's strange for everybody. It makes a big difference in this concept, if you have native speakers in the community or not; that also makes a big difference between the US and Europe.


One point I want to add, especially from the intranet point of view: Intranets are nowadays always user generated content.
That needs to be respected
* in creating the CMS and other means to create, deliver and manage content
* in talking to the authors and other contributors
* in considering language issues

That adds up to a multidimensional model of influences and dependencies:
who created the content (“professional” author, part-time contributor; headquarter representative, local employee; manager, expert...)
whom does the content address (local – international clientel; mandatory or optional information)
references: other contents (are they translated?), applications; what is the desired output (eg. prepare customer letters – use the correct wording in the local language)
communication clouds: who is talking how about this topic? where do you need a common language (application users and helpdesk, retail sales and customers, sales and controlling etc.) - sometimes translation can be an obstacle in understanding... (what does “preferences” mean in ukrainian? or romanian?’

The main question is actually: What is it we should translate?
Then you can answer the question how to translate, how to handle this process.

Boy and girl intranets

In evaluating all the intranet solutions in our Group, this is one of my central findings:

There are boy-intranets and there are girl-intranets.

That does not only depend on who creates or manages them; the main criteria is how new content is treated.

New content in a girl-intranet is welcomed quite strictly: "Take off your shoes, hang your coat here, do you want tea or coffee? You will sit here; hand on a second, I will be right back".
That's a lot of work, but it creates a clear and tidy surface.

New content in a boy intranet has a more relaxed entree: "Beer is in the fridge, the TV is there - help yourself."
That's less work - but it works only, if the rules are simple and clear.

If you start thinking about exceptions - that's like marrying: can be heaven, can be hell, but it definitely only works if the rules are very clear.

(I will get back on this with some examples)