[Sigia-l] Multiple languages on a single web page

[Anders Ramsay]

On 8/20/02 2:00 PM, Chiara Fox at chiarafox at yahoo.com wrote:
> My question to the group is, do you have any
> suggestions on how to make the transition between the
> languages as smooth as possible?

A couple thoughts:

1. You might want to re-purpose the concept used in Google for results in
different page formats.  If a link leads to a page in a different language
(format), a bracketed suffix would be appended ***in the language used on
the page in view***, e.g.

"Offices in Tokyo [Japanese]"

"Kontor i New York [engelska]"
(so, that would be Swedish with a link to an English text site)

(Google uses a prefix, and that would work too if you can set the prefix
copy to be less dominant)

If a link is going to page in the language(format) currently being viewed,
there is of course no suffix.

With Google, I didn't notice the prefix at first and just clicked away, but
after having gone to a PPT or PDF page a couple times, I now always look at
the prefix -  so, a bit of a learning curve and a small cost to the user,
but lots of value in the long term.

2.  Offer users the options of page translation (E.g. place a "translate
this page into <langauge-selector> at the top of a page.) Even though
dynamic translations sometimes are a bit clunky, they usually get the main
point across, which can be valuable for some users.

-Anders