I’ve been thinking about the languages we see on the web, not least after seeing “Multilingualism in a Global Web” and realised that something I really want out of the web is more languages. I have some Swedish sites I know of, being a swede and all, as well as a couple pages in Japanese, but I’m really missing out on other languages it feels like.
I really like seeing many parts of the world in my everyday life, and the struggle of reading something in a language I barely know or through a scuffed translation program is quite rewarding in its own right!
On that note, do y’all have any non-english websites you like? I’d love to see them! Maybe you even have parts of your website that’s in another language? I myself like to add some small Swedish elements here and there – oftentimes with translations but nowhere near always, mostly because my main target audience is, well, me! Do you do anything similar? Please show me!
I’m a monolingual English speaker, but I’m trying to learn a minority language - Irish. Because there are so few Irish speakers, and almost no monolingual Irish speakers, there are not many Irish language websites. One exception that may interest Yesterwebbers: Gaelchló, which offers free fonts based on historic Irish language typefaces! See if you can find the fabulous 1930s pulp novel covers…
I’m a bilingual French and English speaker, and I’ve been trying to learn a few other languages here and there. My website is currently very small, but I went through the process of translating every page to French, except the blog posts.
I’m in a phase where I wonder if blogging is really enjoyable for me, and I’m thinking of trying to do it more in French, see how it feels.
On that note, I really like Ploum’s approach to a multilingual website. It’s in two languages, but without too much of a hard distinction. It’s mostly French, with English bits here and there. The blog is more clearly divided (you can get a feed of just one or both languages), but it’s cool how you don’t really have to “choose a side” as a visitor. You can just browse and read the bits that you understand.
Noted! I do feel like language learning stuff has a certain space on the multi-language web, too!
Translating every blog post is a strong effort that I really ought to mirror, though on some level it feels abundant since very few swedish people coming across my website are likely to struggle with english… So I mostly use it for poems and such.
The site in your example is so fun! I love the side-by-side of french and english bios – it really makes it clear that I know some of the most basic French simply by osmosis – one of many things I hope to work even more on in this project!
Yeah, I do get that point, unfortunately… while I may argue that I, at least, don’t do it for views I do like for people to interact with my stuff. That’s why I kinda like the whole “part one language part another” ordeal, it partially “fixes” it.
However, I do also think there is a “market” for it in bigger languages at least, like German and Spanish maybe? That I’m probably just blind to lol
