[REQUEST] Internationalization - Adding multiple languages

[XTJ7]

I think many users would love an Anime-Planet in their language, plus it'd allow those who are not so familiar with the english language to still participate on this site by rating and adding recommendations in their language (visible only to those who would like to read a certain language).

Assuming you sign up, then your default language would be either the one given by your browser or (if it's not found or doesn't exist) just plain English, with the option to change it later within the profile. Then you should have a page "Also see recommendations in the following languages" (or place it in a users settings somewhere) which lists all available languages.
Now all the recommendations in your default language + all the others you selected would be showing up (most users would only use their own language or a combination of their own and English though). Now whenever posting a recommendation you can choose on a small drop down menu which language your current recommendation is written in (or comment, if a review in future might contain comments), this drop down menu showing your default language selected and only listing those languages that are checked under "Also see recommendations in the following languages".

Reviews should of course be available in at least English (or if a version in another language exists) in a language that person understands. So people could either translate or write new reviews in their language, which many people would love to, as their English might not be as good as that of others (like mine for example, which is fairly ok at the best).
Thus it would allow more people to recommend anime to other people all around the globe, which is the basic idea behind Anime-Planet, right? I think it'd wonderfully fit into the existing concept, not even requiring too major changes for that to work.

If an anime review is not available in ones default language, it should always be displayed in English (maybe allowing to set priorities in "Also show recommendations in the following languages", thus if somebody speaks French and Spanish as well as English, his native language is French and his Spanish is better than English, he might choose a higher priority, so if a review is available only in English and in Spanish, he will get to see the Spanish version). If it is not available in a language the user checked in his list, the system could show a note "This review needs a translation (or rewrite) in one or more of the languages you understand." so that people know it needs work and they could contribute on the site.

And of course language files and graphics in editable formats so that users can submit the languages and thus the whole site translation (of the A-P system) would not necessarily be done by a programmer but could be done by users (or groups of users) too, so everyone can contribute on that part as well and add languages.

This is just a rough idea, I liked it though. Hence I decided to share my thoughts with everyone. Feel free to add ideas or criticize me :)

[Oehr]

- whos going to translate?
- are there people going to write foreign reviews? after all, there isn't even one review for each anime yet
- worth the whole effort?
- community will most likely stay english (or jpn^^)... when ap v3 is here, it won't look good...
- if a board is multilanguage, i choose the language with the most posts, though only if i can speak it(ger or eng) -> better support

[XTJ7]

Actually I'm pretty sure the users themselves would like to contribute to the site and thus take care of the translation if the required data can be accessed and edited in a fashionable manner.
Foreign reviews shouldn't be a problem. If there is a field "Review provided by" with a name and a link, I know quite some sites that could provide content for the review section in foreign languages. But even without I would say that in some languages (especially German and French) the demand and the will to contribute are quite big.

I am totally agreeing with your thoughts about the community, it will most likely stay English, which is good. Though there should be some subforums (not the structure of the board, simply one language specific board for each language provided) where users of one nationality can chat amongst each other. This is to ensure that non-english speaking people can still be active in the community (or people that don't speak English well or just don't like speaking English too much). So the whole community would not be splitting up on different languages, but growing more users, more activity. It is not seperation that I wish to achieve with this attempt of adding several languages to the site, it is to reach a wider range of people that I long for.

I would suggest though that probably me and who else has contacts uses them to put up a vote on major sites in specific languages and in the forum as well, about whether that idea would be welcome or not. It is a big step, hence the work should be worthwhile which cannot be assured, but can be covered by asking everyones opinion about such a major change.

Thanks for your comment :)

[sothis]

the problem here is that AP is extremely quality-driven... all synopses go through yours truly and are edited to ensure they are high quality, we only have a limited set of hand-picked reviewers who have university-level writing skills, etc. i've considered globalization for a long time, and my goal is to at least have the site's instructions and such in other languages eventually... but as far as having the quality content translated, i'd have no way of verifying if hte quality is still top notch. in that case, i'd rather have someone looking at something i KNOW is accurate and high quality in english, than potentially marginal in a different language they can understand better.

so yeah, just changing basic site instructions and labels are doable, though i'd need to make sure i found someone who has very high writing skills in that language to create them... globalizing the actual content, while we are still in a very heavy quality-based model, is not as likely.

[Escaflowne]

i'd love to help in this project :)

[shortlex]

it gonna be hard, there's alot of content to translate, and how many langauges are we aiming for

[sothis]

there isnt a lot of content, as i'm talking only about globalizing the site's instructions and such.

anyways, i need to talk with my V3 developer to see how easy it is to have a language switch... we don't even have the copy text done for V3, but once we do, if we are going to put up multiple languages for basic site text for V3, i'll put out a call for arms.

languages ive seen floating around in profile comments are italian, japanese, spanish, portugese, polish, french

[AngryJellyfish]

Well I could do Welsh translation, but I doubt there would be much demand for it :p

[shortlex]

Originally Posted by sothis

there isnt a lot of content, as i'm talking only about globalizing the site's instructions and such.

anyways, i need to talk with my V3 developer to see how easy it is to have a language switch... we don't even have the copy text done for V3, but once we do, if we are going to put up multiple languages for basic site text for V3, i'll put out a call for arms.

languages ive seen floating around in profile comments are italian, japanese, spanish, portugese, polish, french

call to arms you say..
LOL.
*runs back to the shrine to sound the blowhorn. fellow sothis fan club members, do we have a developer amoung us!!!

[sothis]

shortlex you arent understanding :p we already have a developer.