The document discusses the complexities of language and localization in the digital space, highlighting the challenges faced by multilingual users and the misconceptions surrounding language capabilities in different countries. It emphasizes the importance of early and intelligent localization strategies to accommodate diverse linguistic needs while making online tools both multilingual and monolingual friendly. The text also critiques existing localization practices and suggests the need for better solutions to support multilingualism in various online platforms.

1. Waiting for the Babel Fish Stephanie Booth

2. Internet: Space Cruncher Freedom from spatial constraints more intercultural contact change of initial obstacle: space language

3. Linguistic Borders Online, the strongest borders are linguistic. Some multilingual people act as bridges. How could our tools assist them in their task?

4. Misconceptions But everybody speaks English! country = language

5. Geographical Abuse IP => country => language, right? country != language bad localisation

6. Guilty: Amazon

7. Guilty: eBay

8. Guilty: PayPal

9. Guilty too! Google.ch => DE Blogger in France => FR

10. L10n advice for Tool Builders localise early, localise smart plan non-EN from the start (not an afterthought) language != country regional variations (fr-fr, fr-ch, fr-qc...) « crowdsource » in-house « linguist » smart user language detection

11. Detecting User Language Specified by: profile (tool-side) browser preferences OS/browser language geographical location one language? n languages? priority? how proficient?

12. Countries are important, but... for language: one factor amongst several for laws: very important taxes & censorship Examples: - shipping - porn

13. What are my languages? know / don't know (too binary) Know? Speak? Read? Write? Read a book? A newspaper article? Have a conversation? Write a letter? Write a book? Give a talk?

14. Multilingual Humans Who is multilingual? more multilinguals than monolinguals Being human among humans means living in a state of ever incomplete multilingualism. Mario Wandruszka

15. Monolingual Silos isn't the internet multilingual? multilingual community <> multilingual people multiple monolingual spaces <> mixing languages where do we fit in?

16. L10n Insufficient Localisation: translation of the interface into another language monolingual in various languages « Multilingualisation »: (yes, it's ugly) mixing languages manages code-switching different language combinations

17. Blogging Tools: WordPress well localised language is a blog-level attribute assumes you blog in one language no in-built strategies for mixing languages => 1 blog per language a solution: other-language excerpts translation is too hard keeps mono&multi audience quite happy keeps the bridge-blogger very happy

18. Presence Tools: Twitter not localised => adoption issue non-EN communities present language filtering? language detection?

19. The Multilingual Challenge Making a space both: multilingual-friendly monolingual-friendly How do we keep everybody happy? different language combinations different language skills No solution is perfect for everybody.

20. Going Multilingual a strategic and technical problem Strategic how do we allow languages to mix? what do we translate? what do we show people? how do people define their language skills? Technical design encoding lang, hreflang (HTML) language detection automated translation Remember. Most people are multilingual.

21. Bonne route ! Flickr Photo Credits romerican Antoon Kuper Hobvias Sudoneighm Grant MacDonald Zoom Zoom A JC Claude Covo-Farchi Stephanie Booth Lausanne, Switzerland http://climbtothestars.org [email_address] Skype: steph-booth Google, 10.07.2007 Mountain View, CA