On Language

One of the great challenges of an international blog like this is language. With authors from many countries who wish to converse with each other and a wider audience, the core requirement is understanding.

When we produced the Global PR Blog Week, we had only two authors who chose to blog in both their native languages (Spanish and Hungarian) and English. This worked quite well. However, with the sheer number of authors and, therefore, languages represented, that approach would quickly become unwieldy here. [In fact, I venture to guess that this blog might be groundbreaking in its international scope!] Thus, Guillaume has requested that posting be in English, the de facto language of business.

Because so many people here are not native English speakers, this will probably mean that the phrasing and grammar may not be perfect. Well, you rarely find that on native English speakers' blogs either!

The important thing here is exchange of the ideas and knowledge.

So, fellow authors and visitors, if there is something you read here that you don't understand, please speak up so we can clarify. Also, if you simply cannot get the words out in English, by all means write them in your own language, and we, as a community, will translate as best we can.

Personally, I hope that people use phrases and terminology in their own languages, with a translation following, so we can learn these things from each other too.

Comments

[Julio Alonso]

Elizabeth,

It's good to see that past the usual "introducing Mr X" someone actually starts contributing some content. Well done.

On the topic itself, even though I speak five languages, I believe multi-language blogs are not the way to go. It might work on two-language personal blogs or maybe in multilingual environments (see Belgium), but not as a rule. Agreeing to post in English obviously gives a good common ground, but still leaves a huge amount of people out.

I had to deal with this when I first started blogging. I decided to go on a Spanish language blog, and have created a good readership on the Spanish speaking blogosphere. I realized, however, that many of the topics would also be of interest to the international crowd, plus it must seem a bit strange to get a trackback to your blog in another language and not be able to follow on the conversation. Therefore, I started an English language version. I normally post all the original thoughts on the Spanish version and post on the English one the topics that seem more relevant and/or popular. It's a way to try to link both worlds. But it is also a lot of extra work.

[Guillaume du Gardier]

Julio,

I want to give the same level of attention to each new member, that's why I am "spamming" a little bit with those regular "New Member"announcements, but I feel this is an information of interest for all of us, rather than just adding them on the members list.
To help the real content and debates come more quickly, I've been sending invitation to members to be author, so that each can feel free to launch, initiate a discussion. I should have been invited everyone at the end of this day, I hope every one will subscribe quickly.

I think I will also allowed more comments to be visible on the left menu (actually we can see the 10 last) as discussion might be missed by some of us when they are no more visible on the left side.
There have been already some discussions initiated by Adriana, and Ludovic has been setting up a wiki, perhaps you missed it ?

Be sure I do my best to go quickly with the "administrative " stuff as we have a much more interesting work to do together.

Thank you for your involvement and "hungriness" (does the word exists ?)or "apetite" in launching the real work !

[Colin from Bklyn]

It won't be long before assuming that English is the "de facto language of business" will be a recipe for going out of business. Look at what happened at Orkut, which assumed that its social network would be confined to English-speakers. It's now 60 percent Brazilian, who are quite militant about their right to participate in Portuguese. A lot of markets are funny that way: Look at the exploding Hispanic market in the United States. In the blogosphere, similarly, I think you are really missing something if you don't have some way of accessing what Francophone bloggers are writing and thinking about it. They have some damned good ideas. And if you don't have a way of getting at them, they certainly have a way of getting at yours. I predict brain-drain.

[Elizabeth Albrycht]

Colin,

I wish you had a more specific recommendation than, "some way of getting at them." Of course we want to access what Francophone bloogers are writing and thinking. Plus those in other languages. However, today, auto-translation tools are still not very good, and often people don't want take the extra steps it needs to run something through an auto-translator. That is why we are encouraging English at this point, with the acknowledgement that if you simply cannot write in English, you do it in your native language and we hope that someone who is part of this community will offer translation. Authors and commenters can also choose to write in multiple languages, with English following, if that is what they prefer.

Of course, it is possible, that one language will come to dominate here that isn't English. If that is the way the community heads, a la Orkut, well, c'est la vie. In the meantime, there isn't a budget here for UN or Euro-style multi-translators, so we'll do the best we can among ourselves.

[Julio Alonso]

Guillame,

My comment was not a critic to your introduction work (which I think is very necessary), but more a thanks to Elisabeth. As you said, I had missed some of the previous topics, I'll have to catch up.

On the language topic, I think it is fair to say that English is the most widely understood and easier to use for multi-country groups like this. Needless to say, even if it might be the best way to put together people from different places, it is not the only language in which interesting content is generated.

We (the people who blog), need to find ways to cross the language-divide and provide access to top-content from the French, Spanish or Italian blogging community. How to do this is not crystal-clear just yet.

My bet would go for some kind of digest-blog in English that sumarizes the best of say the Spanish blogging space. I think it would be very impractical to try to translate everything into every other language. But then again, that's the rational approach, not always what happens.