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Multilingual Blog Option

  1. kiturak
    Member

    I would love a function that enables multilingual blogging on WordPress.com.*

    I believe many people who are blogging read blogs from all over the world, like me, and would like to be able to reach all of those people, too - to reciprocate, to analyze another blog post or write a response, or simply share content with them, without losing the possibility to reach friends at home, in their own language.
    (As an aside, it even feels weird to comment on foreign blogs, linking to your website, and knowing most people who follow the link will not understand a word on it.)

    It requires a lot of work to do translations, and not everyone is able to do so. On the other hand, for those who are able to and want to invest the time and effort, it can be a means not to limit their readership to their own country, especially if their first language is one not shared by many people - even if they do not have the knowledge or resources to blog on wordpress.org.

    It seems almost anachronistic that inside the world wide web, there are still so many local barriers (even if only one-sided, for a part - I can read English blogs, but their authors and commentators cannot read mine). A multilingual blogging option could help to break down communication barriers between people from different countries. It could enable them to gain more readers, to share their thoughts with those who would like to know them instead of only those who speak the same first language.

    *There are excellent plugins available with this function, e.g. qtranslate, but only for wordpress.org so far. (see http://codex.wordpress.org/Multilingual_WordPress). For WordPress.com, there are some rather complicated and unsatisfying workarounds.

    The blog I need help with is kiturak.wordpress.com.

  2. justjennifer
    Member

    What workarounds? Do you mean the links to Google Translate or other translation utilities? Of course any mechanical translation utility is usually for comic relief rather than real translation.

    There are a number of people running multilingual blogs, but only because they've opened separate blogs and post to each of them individually.

  3. kiturak
    Member

    LOL about the comic relief.

    Yeah, I meant the separate blogs. Don't know if that even counts as 'workaround', heh. Or separate entries in the same blog. Or marking up different language text in different colours.

    What I forgot in the OP is that obviously you can be more inclusive inside your own country as well if you translate your content into a language that's widely understood.

  4. timethief
    Member

    @kiturak
    Just in case you are not aware of it this translation widget is working very well on my blog. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/02/14/translation-widget-for-wordpress-com-blogs/ In addition I have a translation page which visitors are also using. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/translation/

  5. kiturak
    Member

    @ timethief: Thank you. This won't help me, though, I'm afraid. I'm with kevinspain, on that point,
    http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/multi-languages-of-the-same-theme?replies=8#post-552558

    Google translate is a great tool if you are getting hits from a lot of different countries and you just need your users to have a rough idea about what's going on in your blog but, when it comes to accurate translation, it's really not very good at all.

    Or, as justjennifer put it.

  6. raincoaster
    Member

    You can blog in as many different languages as you want in one blog on WordPress.com, provided they all use the same alphabet. That's the rub.

    There MAY be a workaround using offline blog editors like Windows Live Writer, but I haven't tried it yet.

  7. kiturak
    Member

    @ raincoaster: Thank you. Maybe I didn't write clearly enough what I am looking for in the OP.

    For people who don't speak your language to be able to read your blog without major obstructions, it is necessary to have one spot easily accessible from the main page (preferably a little symbol *on* the main page) to skip to all the content in their language for the whole site.

    If you simply post everything two (or three) times, each time in a different language, you still need to adapt the navigation. A category cloud in three different languages will fill half the screen or either be so general as to be mostly useless, the main menu does not fit in the assigned space any more, ... besides being hugely unwieldy for all involved because everyone alway has to look for and scroll to content in their language "manually".

    As I said, workarounds like these are rather complicated and unsatisfying. In this case, for more than two languages, it is simply not feasible.

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