Language issues: FR DE IT EN

[stephtara]

This post could also be titled: "How to sail these seas with French-speaking pirates, arrrrh!"

I'm writing this post in English, because like it or not, it has become a de facto lingua franca for many people and multilingual communities. I'm a francophone living in Lausanne, and one of the topics I've thought about a lot over the last years is bringing multilingual communities together online.

I am very enthusiastic about the creation of a Pirate Party in Switzerland. I am afraid, however, that the Roestigraben might get in the way of giving this initiative maximum traction. Here are some ideas and suggestions, based on my experience, that could help prevent the Swiss Pirate Party from becoming an exclusively Swiss German affair.

Language is the most important barrier to entry online. One example: I had trouble logging onto this forum after registering. It was my fault, I used the wrong username. But the whole interface being in German, a language I decypher more than read, made me ignore the content of the error message, try and guess what the problem was, and nearly give up when I was unsuccessful. This might sound "lazy", but I assure you, many people would react like this (and I'm used to forums and signing up for stuff all over the place).

So, one recommendation I would make is be sure the forum interface language can be changed easily and without requiring the visitor to have an account. Using some kind of language detection to automatically serve the best language version to visitors would also be nice. This might seem but a detail, but when you think in usability terms, it's essential: most people will simply turn away when faced with content that is not in one of "their" languages.

I would also vote against language segregation in the forums and on the blog. What happens in language-segregated forums is that bilinguals tend to (naturally) migrate towards the majority language, because that is where most of the action is and where the most people are. This makes the minority forums even poorer (brain drain). One needs to accept to mix languages, and I think that the community here is really ready for that.

Same goes for the blog: have one blog with posts in various languages. If possible, give posts a short excerpt in one or more other languages (you can see me doing this with English and French on my blog Climb to the Stars). This helps people who might have some understanding of the language the post is written in to have an idea of what it is about and then decide if they want to go through the trouble of reading it. For example, I can't skim in German. But if I have a French or English summary which tells me that an article is of a particular interest to me, I'll try and read it.

In this kind of multilingual environment, ideally, the software managing the site/forum should have enough "language intelligence" to know what language each element is in, and allow search by language too (but have default search over all languages).

Back to the blog: we need more original content in French, Italian, English. Original content is often easier to produce than translations. I would be happy to contribute some in French and English, but I feel a bit of a lightweight on political and legal issues. However, I do have to say around the piracy "topic" that would probably be relevant. To encourage non-DE authors, a short page explaining in their language how to get started as a contributor would be helpful.

If I look at the blog now, it is very DE-dominant. I know you're aware of this and want to change things -- and I think it's really urgent to get some FR/EN/IT content up there, so as not to discourage non-DE visitors who might think "just another Swiss German thing". It's sad to say, but here in ch-fr we do have a tendancy to resent the linguistic majority for ignoring us and only serving us second-hand translated stuff. (I don't know how things are in ch-it, I'm afraid to say.)

Don't neglect how sensitive these language issues can be for linguistic minorities and how a few clumsy decisions early on can alienate whole parts of the country.

What I learned from the Swiss Blog Awards disaster (from a linguistic point of view) is that it is vital to have people of different linguistic groups in the core group of an organisation -- ie, have Romands and Ticinese amongst the "leaders" or "deciders" (if involvement of these linguistic groups is desired).

So, here were my first few thoughts. I'd be quite happy to get involved as the resident "linguistic consultant" if my experience seems relevant, as well as contributing (some) posts in FR.

Questions, comments, reactions... all most welcome.

I'm @stephtara on Twitter and bunny/bunnywabbit_ on freenode if you want to find me there.

[qiv]

Thank you for the input concerning languages of the Blog and among the leaders. Right now we already lack of Romands ... Hope your Un Parti des Pirates Suisse multilingue? on your blog helps I would welcome some blog entries in our news in French very warmly! Being from Biel/Bienne myself Röstigraben is an important issue to me too and I am used to everyone speaking his language. There will be a poll soon in order to find out if we can continue like this.

[Ced]

I second the suggestion about a true multilingual environment. Just mixing the languages seems like a natural way to go forward. There's not only French and German, not only black and white, but many many grey tones in between.

[silvermind]

Inputs from this german post

My current idea for a mult language strucutre, just an idea from the german Team page:

• "Mangement" (multilanguage)
  
  • AG Pirate Office
• Organization (multilanguage)
  
  • AG Public Relations
  • AG Management
  • AG Digital Infrastructure
• Party Program (multilanguage)
  
  • ...
• Coordination Swissgerman (Deutsch)
  
  • ...
• Coordication Swissromandie (French)
  
  • ...

May be we should merge the AG Management (Member DB, Traesury, etc..) into the AG Pirate Office, which should support the "Mangement"

[Ced]

So, you're proposing English titles. This was criticized earlier, but I also vote for this suggestion.

[silvermind]

I think it make less sense when we have for example a "Public Relations Team" in both French and German.. But surely it would be great when all pirates what ever language they speak can participate in the group.

I think there are three keypoint:

• The Name of the Group (might be latin too, all should understand what the group is about)
• The internal discussion language of the group
• The external communication language of the group

[Die's Man]

Please allow a short post, just to link to another with questions and input that are related to this thread