[Sigia-l] i18n effects in folksonomies

Sat Jan 15 17:22:48 EST 2005

>From your blog post - 
"There might be other algorythms as well - if I do a Google search for "Música", it knows this isn't English, because it asks me if I want to "Search for English results only", so there is some algorythm going on there I assume (unless they also use the dictionary approach)."

Does Google look at the meta tag for language in the header for HTML or the namespace for XML? eg -

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">

How do pages in more than one language work? For example, I read a language learning forum which is in Japanese and English. How can a tagging site determine if I am writing in Japanese unless I write in Kana or Kanji? If I write in Romaji, where does that fit (and yes I know Romaji's not really anything!)?

Also - 

"The most interesting aspect of the screenshot above isn't that there are tags in other languages, is that the tags are the same in other languages. The tags in French and Spanish and such have their English translations right on the same page. This suggests that people seem to tag things similarly in different languages."

I don't think that would be true for every category, language or cultural group. I can understand French, Spanish and English crossing over, but not say, Hindi and Cantonese. Once you get away from the really obvious tags like 'family' 'house' 'work' how are the emotions tags defined?

As a librarian, I still behave like one when I use sites such as 43 things, Technorati, flickr etc. I search for other peoples' tags first instead of making my own which may be slightly different from ones that already exist. I can't be the only one, as there are many people with the same specific goals at 43 things, for example - http://www.43things.com/things/view/2620 "read and implement getting things done". There are of course many variations on Getting Things Done as a tag, but 15 people can't have all decided to come up with that tag independently, they must have searched for key words within that before assigning it to themselves. 

cheers,
Fiona

Librarian
SBS Radio Resource Centre
Locked Bag 028 
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia

Ph: (02) 9430 2862
Email: fiona.bradley at sbs.com.au

>>> Peter Van Dijck <peter at poorbuthappy.com> 15/01/2005 11:36:18 pm >>>
(Apologies for cross-posting)

I wrote about i18n effects in folksonomies here:
http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2005/01/15/2419/ 

I'd really like to hear some comments :) It's all about how people tag 
things in different languages, and what we can do with that. Right now, 
a challenge is to display tags in someone's language for people who 
don't speak English. But there are other i18n effects happening, and I 
wonder how we can use those to improve the local user experience of 
using tags.

Any ideas anyone?

Cheers,
Peter

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