Global Voices Online

Posting about a blog that isn't in English? Here are some guidelines.

Reflecting conversations on blogs that are written in languages other than English is a rapidly expanding and exciting part of what we do. We want that to be reflected both on our web site and to international internet searchers using languages other than English.

1. Identifying languages

   In order to make sure our material is as widely available as possible, especially through searches, it makes sense to observe the international standards used to indicate what language we're talking about.

   For example, here's a global link post (aka roundup) which refers to a blog entry in Chinese:

   “In “So-called…” Massage Milk blogger Wang Xiaofeng assigns labels with a contemporary context and a heavy dose of irony to Cultural Revolution-era propaganda posters. [ZH]”

   (China - Revolutionary Irony)

   We can see from the ZH that the entry being discussed is written in Chinese. Whenever we refer to non-English items we should use the appropriate language code after the link.

   Here is a short list of languages and their two-letter codes:

   Arabic - ar
   Belarusian - be
   Chinese - zh
   Filipino - fil
   French - fr
   Hebrew - he
   Indonesian - id
   Japanese - ja
   Khmer - km
   Malay - ms
   Persian - fa
   Polish - pl
   Portuguese - pt
   Russian - ru
   Spanish - es
   Thai - th
   Turkish - tr
   Vietnamese - vi

   Unfortunately nothing is ever simple when it comes to international standards. There are two codes in operation to define languages - one consisting of two letter, the other more recent, of three letters. Both are valid. I used the two-letter codes in the list above for simplicity's sake. Here is a link to a complete list of all languages with both their two- and three-letter codes (ISO 639 codes). There's a similar list, with links to entries on the languages concerned, on wikipedia.

2. Using original language text in GV posts

   Let's take this post: Mom, Dad and God, as an example of using original language text together with translation.

   There are good reasons why it makes sense to post the original language when you translate part of a post:
   - people who read the language in question can be confident that we know what we're talking about and are accurate;
   - language-based search-engines will find the content and we'll get more widely read;
   - it makes us immediately appear as international as we are.

   So wherever possible please include the text that you translate in its original form. A quick cut-and-paste should do the job.

   You will notice that on the example post about Lebanon the translation into English appears on the web page both indented and with useful pale grey blocks on either side which mark it out as being different from other blocks of quoted text.

   This is very easy to achieve. Simply put the command < div class="translation" > before you type in the English translation, and at the end of the block of text put in < /div >

   The result looks like this and makes our page both attractive and easier to follow:

   و اضحك اليوم منك و من نفسي عندما استعيد وحشيتك المطلقة في التعامل مع خطيبي الاول؟ يقول مساء الخير , لا ترد التحية, نتأهب للجلوس على مائدة الطعام, تتجاهل وجوده كليا … بعد فترة و عندما شعرت بقيود الزواج تحيط بي , قررت الانفصال و استسلمت لقيودك التي اسرتني بين جدران المنزل لاشهر عدة, لكن بريق السعادة في عينيك لم يكن ليخفى على احد. تتاللت الايام و توالى العرسان و ردات فعلك, هذا اهبل, و هذا من ديانة مختلفة, و هذا نسونجي و بقينا سنوات على هذا الحال
   ..Today I laugh at you and at myself, when I remember the absolute savagery with which you treated my first fiancé. He greets you, you don’t reply, you go have supper instead. You completely ignore his existence…Later, when I felt I was close to getting married, I chose to broke up with him and surrendered to your chains instead, chains that locked me home for many months. But the spark of joy in your eyes was very obvious. Days have passed, suitors came by and went. You found faults with them all: crazy, different religion, womanizer.. many years have passed just like that…