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WP and non-English user-friendliness

  1. andyash
    Member

    WordPress is still a predominantly English bloghosting. It is used all over the world and is quite popular thanks to great design, cool team, special "chosen" vibes (often) and many other reasons. But it is still quite non-friendly to non-English users.

    LiveJournal and Blogger, for example, open in an all-Russian interface (i.e. when you type http://www.livejournal.com in the address bar the page opens in Russian automatically), while in WP even if you choose other-than-English language as your primary one, most things would still be written in English, plus after you go away and return the settings will be again turned to English ones.

    Maybe WP team can consider taking a more open approach to its main and other pages (I do not mean translating the Forums, for example) and make them available in other languages. This could be a possible way to increase non-English fanbase.

    As for WP engine (when you have blogs without wordpress.com in the blog address) it is more popular among Russian bloggers than WP.com accounts. The latter is very few in number. WP is still familiar only to enthusiasts and computer geeks, but then they all have standalone blogs based on WP engine.

    I don't have a slightest problem using WP with its present English interface, but I think that more people could come and join us from my country if WP had pages entirely in Russian (and other languages).

  2. andyash
    Member

    Addition:
    When you change language in your WP admin area (dashboard) the only change is that blogs in "hot blogs" or "hot posts" shown in the admin area are chosen from the chosen-language-blogs. All the headers, inscriptions and buttons remain in English.

    Plus in my experience, WP often counts Bulgarian blogs/posts as Russian, though despite the same alphabet these are two different languages.

  3. universalgeni
    Member

    We - the bloggers - are all the resources needed to fix that. I would gladly offer my assistance. I have Danish blogger colleagues who know a 100 times more about programming than I do. And write a faultless Danish. They would be just as happy as I would to offer their services for free...

  4. andyash
    Member

    Unfortunately I know nothing about programming, but can help translating some things at least. And I can make sure there are no spelling and other mistakes in the translation :-) (the new WLW Beta 3 comes in Russian and I've noticed some mistakes or misprints in the new, Russian interface).

  5. theo48
    Member

    What would be really terrific - if you had (1) ENGLISH language + (2) your own native language right next to it ... it would make editing easier, and you would not have to translate anything, for instance while discussing things with wordpress-support.
    Somebody gives support to you in the english language, and you would have the english term they use right next to your own native language term on your page! But maybe that is a bit too much to ask on a non-commercial site ... Theo

  6. claudecf
    Member

    Recently, I was pointed to this link
    http://translate.wordpress.com/

  7. universalgeni
    Member

    I was not able to log in. My user name is rejected. It says nothing about how to become a member...

  8. andyash
    Member

    Well, guys, I didn't mean "translating anything" or using external services. What I meant was that when anybody in, for example, Russia types in http://www.wordpress.com in the address bar of a browser they get a totally Russian-language page(s)/interface of a bloghosting service (just like LJ of Blogger do).

  9. universalgeni
    Member

    Did you get in, andyash? There is a link in the upper right corner of the page claudecf wrote about.

  10. universalgeni
    Member

    andyash, this guy here is in charge of many of the Russian related matters here on WordPress and he is an official staff member. Perhaps you should write a polite suggestion on his blog? He might accept your offer on voluntary assistance, if WordPress approves the project:

    http://nikolay.wordpress.com/

  11. andyash
    Member

    I did get in and am testing what translate.wordpress.com is. )

  12. andyash
    Member

    And Nikolay is Bulgarian, not Russian, besides his blog has no posts, so how could he be an authority other than being a member of staff? )

  13. universalgeni
    Member

    I believe Nicolay is new on the Staff but he IS a staff member none the less.

    :-D)))

    It is also my impression, that he opened his blog in order have a dialog with us. At least that is how I understood various threads here on Forum. :)

    Nicolay's blog is new. It was started on July 27th, 2007. Here is a link to his Bulgarian blog if you prefer:

    http://nb.niichavo.org/

  14. universalgeni
    Member

    andyash, - keep me informed about the project, will you? I would be happy to organize and participate in a Danish version. Just drop a line anywhere on my blog...

  15. andyash
    Member

    Well, hope this little participation of mine in translating WP is going to make us see Russian WP.com interface!

  16. universalgeni
    Member

    Were you able to log in at this site? http://translate.wordpress.com/

  17. andyash
    Member

    I did. The same login/password as in WP.com. And RoboForm made it easier.)

  18. nbachiyski
    Staff

    Hello all,

    adnaysh, if you want your interface language to be in Russian go to your profile page -- there you can choose "ru - Русский". The switch in the Options page just determines in what language are your blog posts.

    We will be very happy if you contribute to the translations on translate.wordpress.com. You can log in there with your WordPress.com username and password. If you don't see your translations on the live site for a long time, just write in the forums or to the support, we will take care of it.

    Thank you,
    Nikolay.

  19. andyash
    Member

    to nbachiyski: Thank you for the hint. Now I see, though funnily some words among everything else Russian are still in English. I guess it makes me want to go and do some job at translate.wordpress.com.

  20. andyash
    Member

    Anyway, this is all very nice, but what I meant was a bit different. You have to have a profile (i.e. already register) and then you change the interface language into Russian. In LJ and Blogger when you type in the address of the bloghosting home page (whether you have a profile or not, which is more important) you get a Russian interface, despite the .com address. The absence of this makes WP absent from Yandex list of blog services (they count the number of posts for about 50-60 services). I complained to them, but they said that WP isn't a Russian language service. Well, a silly answer taking into account that LJ and Blogger aren't Russian services either. But there is also truth behind that silly answer: WP isn't Russian language service in the sence of not having an ability to automatically determine that a user is opening it from Russian and automatically change the interface language.
    Again, this is no problem to me (I can even switch back to an overall English interface after playing with Russian-English one). But this all significantly limits the WP fanbase in Russia (not the last country in blogosphere) among ordinary bloggers, not just computer geeks and people with taste. But then maybe it helps keep WP so tasty for the existing fans.))))

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