[thelist] Internationalization was Re: [LONG] Cost of doing business

[Ben Henick]

I'm not subbed to thesite, so if someone could forward this message there
(or convince me offlist to subscribe) that'd be peachy!

On Tue, 7 May 2002, rudy wrote:

> this will be outrageously out of context, but still...
>
> > (since evolt is after all an English-language forum)
>
> that is merely a happenstance, not an intended outcome
>
> we had a complete article in german recently, and would love to do more to
> support all web developers, not just the english-speaking ones

This rather begs some pointed questions about the evolution of the site:

What efforts have been undertaken in the UI implementation to identify
articles in given languages apart from just letting the reader figure it
out?

Does the server scripting support charsets that aren't 8859-1?

Let's suppose that the number of non-English submissions grows.  How easy
will it be to provide malleability to user prefs so that a site visitor
can say "only show me articles written in {x}"?

Might a translation clearinghouse be set up in order to facilitate
translation of existing content for re-publication in additional
languages?

Is there any possibility that site guidelines and/or list guidelines
(though not, I hope, for thechat) might be tweaked to ensure that
evolt.org gets past the PRC's firewalling (assuming that's a realistic
goal at all)?


--
Ben Henick
Web Author At-Large              Managing Editor
http://www.io.com/persist1/      http://www.digital-web.com/
persist1 at io.com                  bmh at digital-web.com
--
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so, Brain, but... (snort) no, no, it's too stupid."
"We will disguise ourselves as a cow."
"Oh!" (giggles) "That was it exactly!"