Slideshow Transcript

1. Slide 1: Stephanie Booth Waiting for the Babel Fish
2. Slide 2: Internet: Space Cruncher Freedom from spatial constraints more intercultural contact change of initial obstacle: space language
3. Slide 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. Slide 4: Misconceptions But everybody speaks English! country = language
5. Slide 5: Geographical Abuse IP => country => language, right? country != language bad localisation
6. Slide 6: Guilty: Amazon
7. Slide 7: Guilty: eBay
8. Slide 8: Guilty: PayPal
9. Slide 9: Guilty too! Google.ch => DE Blogger in France => FR
10. Slide 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. Slide 11: Detecting User Language Specified by: profile (tool-side) ● browser preferences ● OS/browser language ● geographical location ● one language? n languages? priority? how proficient?
12. Slide 12: Countries are important, but... for language: one factor amongst several for laws: very important taxes & censorship Examples: - shipping ● - porn ●
13. Slide 13: What are my languages? Know? Speak? Read? Write? Read a book? A newspaper article? Have a conversation? Write a letter? Write a book? Give a talk? know / don't know (too binary)
14. Slide 14: Multilingual Humans Who is multilingual? Being human among humans means living in a state of ever incomplete multilingualism. Mario Wandruszka more multilinguals than monolinguals
15. Slide 15: Monolingual Silos isn't the internet multilingual? multilingual community <> multilingual people multiple monolingual spaces <> mixing languages where do we fit in?
16. Slide 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. Slide 17: Blogging Tools: WordPress well localised a solution: other- ● language excerpts language is a blog- ● translation is too hard level attribute ● keeps mono&multi ● assumes you blog in ● audience quite happy one language keeps the bridge-blogger ● no in-built strategies very happy ● for mixing languages => 1 blog per language
18. Slide 18: Presence Tools: Twitter not localised ● => adoption issue non-EN ● communities present language ● filtering? language ● detection?
19. Slide 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. Slide 20: Going Multilingual a strategic and technical problem Strategic Technical how do we allow languages design ● ● to mix? encoding ● what do we translate? ● lang, hreflang (HTML) ● what do we show people? ● language detection ● how do people define their ● automated translation ● language skills? Remember. Most people are multilingual.
21. Slide 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 stephanie.booth@gmail.com Google, 10.07.2007 Mountain View, CA Skype: steph-booth