[Theforum] Re: [Admin] Re: langs (was: 17320)

[Martin Burns]

Warden, Matt wrote on 12/11/01 8:14 pm

>
>Should this be on theforum? 
Yes. Good catch Matt & Isaac.

>Martin wrote:
>>I'm assuming that no-one thinks that being truely global (rather than
>>just talking about it) is A Bad Thing, but I'm entirely open to different
>>opinions.
>>
>>(note to naysayers: now would be a good time to say 'nay')
>
>If you're talking about all of a sudden putting up an article in German
>while every article in the past has been in English, then I guess that's a
>"nay" from me.
>
>You seem to be hinting at multiple versions of content. 

Not just hinting ;-)

I'm thinking of having support for multiple versions, not
necessarily *requiring* that all content be available in
all languages.

I think there are a few ways of handling it:

1) have subdomains or subdirectories for each language/
     territory combination in used (so france.evolt.org/ or
     evolt.org/fr_fr/index.html) and only articles the
     language/territory show. Of course, all the nav is translated.
     This is probably the most common global CMS format

2) Have language/territory as a preference, the nav localises, 
     and any articles which are available in the appropriate
     language/territory appear in that translation. If they're
     not available in that combination, they appear in English
     if available, and don't appear if not.

>I'm all for that,
>but I can't believe that some group of people would go through the 700+
>articles we currently have and translate them each into X languages.

I don't think we *need* to even translate every new article -
where we have the capability (people with time and motivation)
to do it for a given language, then we should do so, but it's not a 
pre-requisite.

Of course, for the back articles, if we have the capability 
(people with time & motivation) to translate articles which those
people think need translation, then again, that'll be done at the
pace set by the people, their time and motivation.

In either case, one translation of one article is better than we have
now.

Cheers
Martin

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