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Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Nick Balestra — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:12:13 -0000

In switzerland it get even worst. Switzerland have 4 (let say 3) National languages, yep we don't talk swissish...and are: german, french, and Italian. but if you go visiting joomla.ch, you soon discover everything is just in german... I can then understand this issue very well and if it is allready a problem for such a small country like ours. I much appreciate the raising of the problem as i always felt in the middle of something but not really tied to any joomla community, don't know if this is good or bad, i just get used and i am trying to use our multilanguage understanding to levarage my joomla belonging worldwide making bridges here and then among communities and languages.

In this direction google is the only to me really understanding this languages issue even better then our administartion and gov is doing, in fact google.ch you can have it in franch, italian, german, and romanish(the forth natianal language, nowadays only spoken by a minority, its a kind of roman-latin dialect).

@mathias u right google.ch, setted up in italian, nicely give me this:
#1 joomla.ch
#2 joomla.it
#3 joomla.org

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

ivoapostolov — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:39:18 -0000

Well,
There were a lot of talks in the past about it. And that was the wish of the international community, I still remember the project http://international.joomla... that never went into anything.
The problem Brian is to tell it with simple words - in the past, the core simply didn't want to grant the freedom of the local people to work on it. That's the facts. The core was unsure if they can trust the community, as they can not CONTROL it (obviously they don't speak all the languages).
And there come the controversy. From one side was Ole and some other people, including the core, who wanted to have internationalism on joomla.org, but were too scared of not being able to control everything, from the other side were people like me, who wanted the things to be based on a volunteer work, trust and community based approach. However Joomla! never had a true community and therefore that way was impossible.
Now months and years later, nothing has been done yet in that direction.
At least, it is how I see and believe the things happened over the time.
And joomla.org will never be international, neither Joomla! itself will be international till this mania on controlling everything is left in the past...

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Phil Taylor, mySites.guru — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:03:26 -0000

Its been this way for a while brian - just no one told you before - I certainly have seen it funny like this for a long time now.

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Brian Teeman — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:25:28 -0000

very odd, I see what you mean but I've not touched the template at all. The one I tweeted about was not for this site. I'll take a look in the morning.

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Creator — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:52:10 -0000

Yeah He's right Brian, A rating module has appeared between the main column and the right column that I have never noticed before and it is way out of whack. To me it looks like the standard Joomla rating mod. Might this have something to do with your template upgrade fir 2010?

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Sander Potjer — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:44:35 -0000

Thanks for your comment on this blog Ole. It's good to hear you, and others, will think about possible changes to get the joomla.org website more international!

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Brian Teeman — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:31:46 -0000

You know there are so many people who are happy to help - they just have to be welcomed inside.

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Ole Ottosen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:24:24 -0000

Have a feeling of having heard some "noise" before :)

Well anyway, thanks for letting us know once again that it matters.
We do agree, and its fine to have a reminder when things get slow.
Appreciated.

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Brian Teeman — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:15:12 -0000

Might have taken me 4 attempts to write this post but it didn't take me 4 years to first raise this issue. ;)

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Ole Ottosen — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:08:50 -0000

What took you so long Brian? See, when it takes 4 years and 4 attempts to just ask the easy questions, then how long would you expect it to move from "English only" nature... ;p

k, seriously.
Its valid and good questions to ask. You know the answers and so do we. It IS time.

There are some practical problems related to making it actually happen though.
Lets look at the questions you line up.
1. >> Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International?
As much as I would like it to be true, I just have to accept the fact: Joomla core distribution is currently not multi-lingual in the sence of having built-in ability to provide your content in several languages.
Joomla, as in the software, is highly international, but as in the official homepage(s) its obviously not. But I do follow your lead on this question.
Obviously you target the issue that official site joomla.org may not reach its international audience/visitors. True.
Even though there are fine 3rd party solutions for handling multilingual content, then the administrative part of providing better international aware official sites just will be much easier when the core software is ready for it. But we know that until then other solution needs to be found. We can improve, and we will.

2. >>does the first time user know the correct web site to visit to find the most relevant information and support on joomla? Will they be able to easily find information about joomla in their native language.?
No, not all. Again, its valid and just needs to improve. I accept that fact.

3. >> Alternatives and Best Practice
Having the main site and family of sub sites all becoming available in the many languages that support joomla cms probably, most likely, would become an administrative nightmare.
I do like the ideas brought up here, of having a basic 'What is joomla!?" presented in multiple languages, each with their ressources listed. Would be an improvement.
Furthermore we have some ideas of Download becoming available in your preferred language, and docs wiki we would really like to see having language subs.

We do spend quite some time figuring how can we provide better international official sites support, where will it be of use, and where will english only still be the better choise.
Recently I tried out a test for JED to see how a partly translated interface would help non-english speakers. For practical reasons JED has to keep listings and review in english, but the minor improvements of having menus and navigation in your native language was reported to be of great help to the users testing.

We also have ongoing plans to have a more visual language related entrance at the official sites...and this will have multi-lingual support for a start.

So to answer all your questions in short: Yes, its about time.

Ole Ottosen - Joomla! Production Leadership i18n/l10n/translation
http://www.joomla.org

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

polit2k — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:08:05 -0000

Good question: Sorry, I looked again, it's a rating module - but looks funny.

Tim

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Brian Teeman — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:53:34 -0000

What poll?

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

polit2k — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:23:23 -0000

poll is not displaying, at least in chrome it's not.

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Fotis Evangelou — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:06:20 -0000

Wordpress is a great example of a mulit-lingual host website for the CMS. For each language the offer a domain like e.g. http://el.wordpress.org/ - which is a very basic page for a short into to the CMS. Something like that, we potential links to localized websites would be the best for joomla.org in my opinion. :)

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Sander Potjer — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:17:46 -0000

Currently the list with all "official" translations in located in the community area of joomla.org. (http://community.joomla.org...
Maybe it's an good idea to make an other headline on this page: http://www.joomla.org/about... where you can read about all languages, linking to the overview page. Currently you won't find any word about it on the "What is Joomla?" page, the first time you will see a mention about it is on the "Core features" page.

It think it would be great to have bigger exposure of the multi-lingual capabilities of Joomla, and directly on the homepage itself.

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Pete Coutts — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:11:23 -0000

well to first answer your last question, you should be lucky here: http://community.joomla.org... or http://community.joomla.org... perhaps here to: http://community.joomla.org...

In one point you might be right, that joomla.org site is english only could have been dealth with by starting the re-design and resturcturing in past. That could have been a good start to even come alonge with translations of at least the Official announcements...

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Alain Rivest — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:38:07 -0000

I totally agree that Joomla.org should link to other language sites. I don't think there's a directory listing all those sites. Also, it's hard to tell if a particular site is an "official" joomla site maintained by the translation team or just another random joomla site with outdated articles...

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Brian Teeman — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:32:01 -0000

OK hands up to the error. (note I tested it at google.co.uk, google.nl and google.be before I posted and they do NOT return the .co.uk or .be domain first and may not hold true for all 60 languages)

However the point is still the same, as the majority of reviewers links, books etc all point to .org Shouldn't www.joomla.org have links to those language and regional web sites

Re: Joomla is Multi-lingual but is it International | Across the globe - brian.teeman.net

Mathias Verraes — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:22:05 -0000

>> If the first hit on google for "joomla" is to www.joomla.org and they only find information in English will they be able to find even basic "What is joomla" in their own language?

Hehe, classic mistake of English speaking people. Try searching for 'joomla' on google.fr, google.de, google.it etc.