online multilingualism (barcamp london 5)

online multilingualism

chris waiglbarcamp london 5

2008-09-28

Chris Waigl | Barcamp London 5 | 2008-09-28 2

Do you speak several languages?

Is your native language not English?

Are you a web developer (or designer, or project or product manager)?


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?


347 languages > 1Mio speakers

5% of languages → 95% of speakers

75 language > 10Mio speaker

1.2% of languages → 79% of speakers

languages and speakers


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


second-language speakers

unilingualism is a privilege of rich, developed countries

the world's population is massively multilingual

Language proficiency changes fast


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→


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?


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 languagesi don't want to deal with (read) content i don't

understand→ the monolingual/multilingual dilemma


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.”


example: Facebook


example: Google


example: PayPal


example: Paypal


other examples

Amazon.com

stackoverflow.com

Wikipedia

last.fm


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


do you know how the development stack you work with handles Unicode?

full text indexing in UTF-8?

diacritics / Unicode normalization: o ≠ ȯ (U+006F U+0307 ≠ U+022F)


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)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUW7FNSWHyc

http://www.slideshare.net/sbooth/while-we-wait-for-the-babel-fish


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?


online multilingualism

chris waiglbarcamp london 5

2008-09-28


Do you speak several languages?

Is your native language not English?

Are you a web developer (or designer, or project or product manager)?


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?


347 languages > 1Mio speakers

5% of languages → 95% of speakers

75 language > 10Mio speaker

1.2% of languages → 79% of speakers

Gliederung durch Klicken hinzufügen

languages and speakers


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


second-language speakers

unilingualism is a privilege of rich, developed countries

the world's population is massively multilingual

Language proficiency changes fast


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→


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?


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 languagesi don't want to deal with (read) content i don't

understand→ the monolingual/multilingual dilemma


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.”


example: Facebook



example: Google



example: PayPal



example: Paypal



other examples

Amazon.com

stackoverflow.com

Wikipedia

last.fm


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


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: o ≠ ȯ (U+006F U+0307 ≠ U+022F)


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)


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?

online multilingualism (barcamp london 5)

Technology

fmchris waigl barcamp

fchris waigl barcamp

language problem

language i

language fluent speakers

native language

os language

largest languages