Sarah Allen’s reflections on internet software and other topics

In thinking about presenting a web site in a different languages, there are a few very different concerns:

• A localized user interface.
• Localized brand
• Unique content
• User-generated content in different languages
• Translated content

In addition, some sites might consider SEO Translation to entice people searching in their native language to find a site even if the site itself isn’t translated (but to me that seems like a cheap hack). If you really want to reach someone, you want to do so in their own language.

I’ve collected examples below of each different kind of translation and at the end I’ve listed ways to detect and retain language settings with implications for SEO and user experience.

A localized interface is when we translate the functional parts of an application, but it still may display text or play audio/video from a different language. You Tube is a good example of this. In the image below we can see that the navigational elements, YouTube tagline, and labels are in Japanese, but the videos and user-generated text are in their own language. It seems odd to me that I’ve selected Japanese as a language, but that I’m seeing mostly English language content. Perhaps YouTube is detecting my geo-location and showing me videos that are popular in my country, or perhaps YouTube just shows everyone what is globally popular which would slant the votes towards English-language (or perhaps more specifically American English language) content because of its US origins.

A localized Brand is sometimes necessary when brands don’t translate well. If you need to re-brand for a specific market because of the meaning of some word used in your brand, it is likely that your website content will be so different as to not apply to the rest of this article.


Unique content may be the result a targeted marketing initiatives, where advertisements or introductory material in a language is written to be appropriate to the target culture. For some text-focused products, the product may actually differ in some meaningful way in the target language, such as with WordReference.com which has different dictionary features available for some languages, so the introductory text is quite different between Spanish and German pages:

 

User generated content like we saw in the YouTube example above is a bit different from uniquely targeted or language-specific product text. When people write comments or submit text or video contributions in their own language, that content may be appropriate to a global audience, even if it was submitted in a specific language. Most sites don’t even have a way of detecting or specifying the submission language, so they simply display all user generated content equally. It is technically possible to detect language (or at least make a good guess) based on unicode characters and dictionary lookup. For example, the language website tatoeba does this quite well. You just need to be careful to allow the user to change the language, because it is possible to guess wrong. For example, some Japanese words share Chinese characters and other languages also share sequences of characters that have different meaning. In the example below Tatoeba guessed the language correctly for my three words, but allows me to select a different language just in case:

Providing translated content makes sense for a global brand with information that is generally useful to a global audience. For example, Adobe translates product information pages such as with http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/volumelicensing/ and http://www.adobe.com/la/aboutadobe/volumelicensing/ :

Technical Options

There are a few ways to detect and respond to the need to reach people who speak different languages.
We can display a specific language, based on:

1) Accepts header, cookie or query parameter. For example, Tatoeba.org respects the accepts header and redirects to http://tatoeba.org/spa/ when it is set to Spanish (es). Whereas, YouTube requires you to set your language (at the bottom of the page), then uses a query param (http://www.youtube.com/index?hl=es) which remains sticky, presumably with a cookie, to retain the language setting.

2) Country domain. (e.g. www.google.fr, de.wikipedia.org) This is most useful when content or functionality is targeted for the culture or adjusted based on geolocation. It makes it easy for users to see content for their country or culture even when they are away from home or for cultural tourists or language learners to easily experience a language and culture without leaving their home country. Google has a nice article about geotargeting (via @avdi).

3) Language encoded in the URL This can be combined with #1 above for language detection or be based solely on links.

Steve Klabnik wrote an insightful post (mostly focused on Web Services APIs) where he argued for using the accepts header for localized content. However, the implications for SEO are significant. It is appropriate to use an accepts header, query parameter or cookie when the displayed text is not significant to the content. Most localized UI text (such as “Log in” or “Submit”) is not going to be significant to a search engine or ultimately to the person choosing whether the page is the one they want.

However, if the content is translated, then it could be argued that the page is, in fact, a different resource — different content, different audience. The challenge is exacerbated by the fact that the Google indexing bot will always request our pages in English, so without a separate URL that always presents non-English content, people searching with Google based on non-English queries will be unlikely to find a page that is auto-translated based on the Accepts header or a query parameter.

I dove into this exploration while thinking about how to implement the user experience in multiple languages for Mightyverse. Currently, the site is very English-language-centric and translations of videos are always presented in English. Under the hood, we have a bunch of translations in other languages that I want to figure out how to display to people and to search engines. In some ways the site is like a dictionary site, but in other ways it’s a lot like any media site that would have multi-lingual content and localized UI. Oddly, YouTube was the only media site I could find with content in different languages — I’m sure I know of others, but its not something that is easy to search for!

My conclusion is that the technical solution should be based on the intent. Is the content for a page different enough to be considered a different resource? I personally believe that there is no such thing as a translation which is identical to the source material. Equivalent words in different languages have different connotations. Often the actual substance needs to differ based on a different audience, often in a different country, sometimes with different laws and certainly with a different culture.

Alternately, I suppose I could combine the approaches, and detect that a search bot is asking for the page and generate a document with all of the text for all languages, then display it based on the accepts header and allow the end user to change the language and remember that. I worry, though, that I would need to choose a language for the meta tag description and therefore the page summary presented by the search engine would not match the language of the search query… or maybe I shouldn’t worry and just expect the search results to be smart enough to display relevant text.

[Update: better to have different pages for different languages see multicountry/multilingual seo.]

I love Tara Hunt’s synopsis of being a startup entreprenuer (via Women 2.0)

Her whole presentation really resonates with my experience. Changing the world is tough. That’s what starting a company is all about. I got involved in a startup straight out of college. From the very early days of CoSA (The Company of Science & Art which created After Effects) where we met in living rooms through the grueling nights and weekends of building software in our office where we didn’t turn on the air conditioning in Providence’s sweltering summers and skimped on heat during New England winters. I can’t say that I loved every minute of it, but I’m proud of creating something that people still tell me changed their lives and shifted an industry. Knowing I have the potential for such things, how can I really do anything else when I have ides and see problems in the world that can be solved with software? Knowing how hard it is, understanding the sacrifices that it takes, I also know that I’m more than a little bit crazy.

Nice to feel like I’m in good company.

Complete slides below:

I just watched Mike Monteiro’s recent talk “F*ck you. Pay me.” which has a lot of great advice about how to get make sure you get paid for your work when doing service work for clients. It was targeted at designers, but it rings true for development as well. His talk focused around contracts. I thought I would add a few notes about what I’ve learned in running my own business for the past two years.

I started software development consulting with many years experience in contract negotiation. I have always had a policy of never starting work without a contract. When I first started consulting, I would work hard to get a contract signed as soon as possible. Now I take the time to make sure that this is a relationship I want to get into. I want to make sure we work with clients who need our services and want to work the way we work. We have always provided great value for our clients, but the best value for clients who are aligned with us in wanting agile development processes and where there is a high level of trust.

The legal agreements document a trust relationship, they don’t substitute for one. Never surprise a client in a contract. If they are surprised, just treat it as a communication gap. Your standard contract documents your standard business practices.

When I started, I identified two areas that I would have to learn more about and do well: collections and keeping track of finances. The third thing that I didn’t know I needed to understand was cash flow. For this post, I’ll focus on collections, which is the other side of the legal concerns that Mike talked about. Sometimes, all is good, but there’s a process to getting paid and every company is just different enough to get you into trouble.

As soon as the contract is signed, ask “who can I talk to so that I understand how you process payments?” You want to know:

• Are electronic invoices ok? or do they need paper?
• Who should the invoices be sent to?
• What is the approval process?
• Who is the person who writes the checks or authorizes electronic bill pay?
• Where are they sent from?

You want to know every step of what happens from when you send your invoice to when the check is in your bank. If cash is tight, you want to have a phone call with the person who writes the check. I would just be open with them and let them know that I run a small company and that I had to be sure my folks got paid in a timely manner.

When I establish that rapport up front, the conversations are much easier if the check didn’t arrive. Better yet, I would have a conversation like this: “Hey Betty. I sent an invoice to Bob yesterday and he told me he approved it. Did it get to you yet? Great. So, will payment go out today?” Once I caught my own mistake that way. I was using new invoicing software which had its default payment terms as Net 45, which was significantly longer than what the contract said. This company had a policy of using the longer of contract or invoice terms. With one friendly conversation, I was able to ensure the check got sent out weeks earlier than it otherwise would have.

And lastly, the most important thing to getting paid: always invoice on time.

I am happy to announce that our next series of classes at Blazing Cloud are starting soon!

We will be offering an evening Javascript for Programmers class from May 25th to June 30th, which is targeted toward web developers who have been coding with another language and would like to learn Javascript. This class is taught by Max Carlson, co-founder of Laszlo Systems. Max is a JavaScript wiz and an experienced teacher. He’ll be teaching with our standard test-first approach, and I’m really looking forward to seeing him in action.

We will also be hosting an introductory evening Ruby class for people who have never programmed before, or who have a limited amount of experience programming in another language. The Learn to Program in Ruby class will run from May 25th to June 29th, and is open to anyone, including students and children (if they bring a grown-up)! This class will be co-taught by longtime programmer and Ruby enthusiast Brian Jenkins and Walter Yu, an active RailsBridge teacher who also helps with Engine Yard University. I’m so excited to have Anita Kuno as a virtual TA, which enables us to offer this special class also as a webinar.

Each of these classes will be held at Blazing Cloud in San Francisco, where instructors are passionate programmers currently working in the field, encouragement and delicious snacks are provided for optimal learning success rates, and brightly colored inflatable animals roam freely throughout the workspace inspiring creativity and fun filled brilliance. We take our coding seriously, but I firmly believe that playfulness enhances learning. I’m very excited to have these new teachers bringing their ideas and enthusiasm to Blazing Cloud.

Sign up now and tell your friends. I’ve extended early bird pricing till Saturday, May 12th, and scholarships are available.