Re: Interface language vs content language

Roché Compaan <roche-kb4xc5yObU3kQYj/0HfcvhBnub05S5/[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.zope.plone.internationalization
Organization Upfront Systems
Message-ID <1286294755.2428.178.camel@didi>
Thanks for your thoughts.

On Tue, 2010-10-05 at 14:30 +0200, Hanno Schlichting wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> 2010/10/5 Roché Compaan <[email protected]>:
> > What were the design reasons for forcing a single language (both
> > interface and content) in LinguaPlone? Do you still think this is good
> > idea?
> 
> We actually didn't do that in the beginning. It has cost us countless
> frustration from users in various projects to realize that this was
> needed.
> 
> Having multiple languages on the same page is highly confusing to
> users. It's a much better default to have exactly one language per
> page. You also need to make sure that all links from a page only go to
> content in the same language or make the language change very clear in
> the link itself.
> 
> Of course with all good defaults exceptions exist.

We're still trying to determine if Connexions is such an exception. It
is very different to a company website in that it has educational
resources in many languages. It seems plausible that a multilingual user
familiar with the English UI on Connexions might prefer having the UI in
English while they are reading modules in another language. There are
some instances where a single language site won't work like Google and
Amazon. I would be very annoyed if Google don't show me hits in other
languages if I perform a search using the English interface. Similarly I
want to be able to search for books and reviews in other languages on
Amazon even if I use the English interface.

Wikipedia adopted a single language policy and it seems to work well. In
my estimation Connexions seems closer to a Wikipedia than to a Google or
Amazon.

-- 
Roché Compaan
Upfront Systems                   http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za


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