2. Do you speak several languages?
Is your native language not English?
Are you a web developer (or designer, or
project or product manager)?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 2
3. goal: opening the conversation
facts: what languages are web users...
using? how?
think: how could this change my
practice?
imagine: where is the web going? where
should it be going?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 3
4. languages and speakers
347 languages > 1Mio speakers
5% of languages → 95% of speakers
75 language > 10Mio speaker
1.2% of languages → 79% of speakers
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 4
5. the largest languages
1 language 850-900Mio first-language
speakers: Mandarin
3 languages 300-350Mio first-language
speakers: Spanish, Hindi, English
But: English has 2.5-3 times as many
second-language fluent speakers than
first-language speakers
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 5
6. second-language speakers
unilingualism is a privilege of rich,
developed countries
the world's population is massively
multilingual
Language proficiency changes fast
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 6
7. the (near-future) internet users:
typically do not use English as a first
language
use hundreds of languages overall
typically read several languages
Online multilingualism, l10n, i18n is
→ a user experience problem
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 7
8. multilingualism in UX resources
UX resources pretty much totally neglect
the language problem
in the best case, l10n is planned from the
outset
UX testing with non-primary language
speakers and mutlilingual testers – who
does this?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 8
9. type of site/app (non-exhaustive)
commercial: any language i read is
ok!
search in all my languages. at once.
communities:
i want to post in all my languages
i don't want to deal with (read) content i don't
understand
→ the monolingual/multilingual dilemma
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 9
10. erasing misconceptions
country ⇏ language
language ⇏ country
country flags are a bad idea for
representing languages
“Let's just start with English and think
about other languages later.”
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 10
15. other examples
Amazon.com
stackoverflow.com
Wikipedia
last.fm
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 15
16. elements for technical solutions
HTML attributes: hreflang, lang, xml:lang
what does the user want? OS language,
browser Accept-Language request header
test test test: copy-and-paste context in
many scripts in your input forms
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 16
17. do you know how the development stack
you work with handles Unicode?
full text indexing in UTF-8?
diacritics / Unicode normalization:
ȯ ≠ ȯ (U+006F U+0307 ≠ U+022F)
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 17
18. resources: Stephanie Booth
“While we wait for the Babelfish”
Google TechTalk
“While we wait for the Babelfish”
on SlideShare
(on multilingual/monolingual mixed
communities & multilingual blogging)
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 18
19. and now?
if the Open Web is about making the web
the next repository for global knowledge
and interactions, we must answer the
online mono-/multilingualism question.
what can you contribute?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 19
20. online multilingualism
chris waigl
barcamp london 5
2008-09-28
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 1
21. Do you speak several languages?
Is your native language not English?
Are you a web developer (or designer, or
project or product manager)?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 2
22. goal: opening the conversation
facts: what languages are web users...
using? how?
think: how could this change my
practice?
imagine: where is the web going? where
should it be going?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 3
23. languages and speakers
Gliederung durch Klicken hinzufügen
347 languages > 1Mio speakers
5% of languages → 95% of speakers
75 language > 10Mio speaker
1.2% of languages → 79% of speakers
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 4
24. the largest languages
1 language 850-900Mio first-language
speakers: Mandarin
3 languages 300-350Mio first-language
speakers: Spanish, Hindi, English
But: English has 2.5-3 times as many
second-language fluent speakers than
first-language speakers
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 5
25. second-language speakers
unilingualism is a privilege of rich,
developed countries
the world's population is massively
multilingual
Language proficiency changes fast
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 6
26. the (near-future) internet users:
typically do not use English as a first
language
use hundreds of languages overall
typically read several languages
Online multilingualism, l10n, i18n is
→ a user experience problem
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 7
27. multilingualism in UX resources
UX resources pretty much totally neglect
the language problem
in the best case, l10n is planned from the
outset
UX testing with non-primary language
speakers and mutlilingual testers – who
does this?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 8
28. type of site/app (non-exhaustive)
commercial: any language i read is
ok!
search in all my languages. at once.
communities:
i want to post in all my languages
i don't want to deal with (read) content i don't
understand
→ the monolingual/multilingual dilemma
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 9
29. erasing misconceptions
country ⇏ language
language ⇏ country
country flags are a bad idea for
representing languages
“Let's just start with English and think
about other languages later.”
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 10
30. example: Facebook
Gliederung durch Klicken hinzufügen
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 11
31. example: Google
Gliederung durch Klicken hinzufügen
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 12
32. example: PayPal
Gliederung durch Klicken hinzufügen
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 13
33. example: Paypal
Gliederung durch Klicken hinzufügen
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 14
34. other examples
Amazon.com
stackoverflow.com
Wikipedia
last.fm
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 15
35. elements for technical solutions
HTML attributes: hreflang, lang, xml:lang
what does the user want? OS language,
browser Accept-Language request header
test test test: copy-and-paste context in
many scripts in your input forms
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 16
36. Titel durch Klicken hinzufügen
do you know how the development stack
you work with handles Unicode?
full text indexing in UTF-8?
diacritics / Unicode normalization:
ȯ ≠ ȯ (U+006F U+0307 ≠ U+022F)
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 17
37. resources: Stephanie Booth
“While we wait for the Babelfish”
Google TechTalk
“While we wait for the Babelfish”
on SlideShare
(on multilingual/monolingual mixed
communities & multilingual blogging)
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 18
38. and now?
if the Open Web is about making the web
the next repository for global knowledge
and interactions, we must answer the
online mono-/multilingualism question.
what can you contribute?
Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 19