The GROUPs mechanism makes it possible for any language group to communicate with each other in their native language. It would be an idea to point non-English-speaking newcomers towards a group (or groups) speaking their language (where these exist).
Some days ago I started a group where people can post in other languages, not only in English.
http://www.chess.com/groups/home/babel
My thoughts are such.
Many journals and TV channels have local presentation in other countries. Maybe it is a good idea to make different sections for national authorities. Content in these sections will be made by poeple, for whom this language is native. It can be masters, that you invite to raise popularity, or members themselves. Everyone is able to get into his country's club and communicate with peolple in his language, but also one can enter main section, which is in english and where main events take place.
Games can also be played insight these clubs, or in main space, everyone can choose what he wants, or what he can - if he doesn't know english.
The GROUPs mechanism makes it possible for any language group to communicate with each other in their native language. It would be an idea to point non-English-speaking newcomers towards a group (or groups) speaking their language (where these exist).
Some days ago I started a group where people can post in other languages, not only in English.
Wir wissen was ist passiert am Ende der Geschichte des Turms von Babel?
The GROUPs mechanism makes it possible for any language group to communicate with each other in their native language. It would be an idea to point non-English-speaking newcomers towards a group (or groups) speaking their language (where these exist).
Some days ago I started a group where people can post in other languages, not only in English.
Wir wissen was ist passiert am Ende der Geschichte des Turms von Babel?
Aber natürlich, mein Freund.
Erik. Make a page that people can open up where they can copy text such as when playing a game against someone or a comment in forums and then they can translate it on this seperate page into another language. Also if they wanted to comment in forums but only know russian for example. they can use the translation page to type what they want to say in russian and then translate that back into english so that they can speak in the forums.
too much work for the user
I think that a complete mix of languages everywhere, like in groups/blogs/forums would generate confusion. My suggestion is the Menus, and the registration pages, even at a SEO level multi-language would suck, as for languages I think English (lol); German; Spanish; Portuguese; and French, since most of the websites have those and most of the people in the world knows at least 1 of them, when you register you choose the main language, then you can add flags in your profile to change it later
I know something about translation, having managed large projects, and attended a great many conferences in the translation industry. I am glad you are considering it, and some of your concerns are certainly valid, others probably less so. I don't think most of your concerns about members being able to communicate with each other are that much to worry about. For example, if someone reads an article or blog most (likely all) of the comments are going to be in whatever language the article/blog was written in. And while it's nice to chat with your opponent (we have all made new friends that way), some people don't like to chat, and there is no difference between that situation and the one where we cannot chat due to the linguistic divide. The main thing is that we still enjoy the game.
If you do develop multiple language versions of the site, I'm sure you realize maintenance will become much more involved than it currently is. And when you translate FROM English, you'll find that the target languages typically require additional space, so you may have trouble resizing things to fit aesthetically.
You may want to look into using some terminology management s/w. If you try to use members to supply translations, one of the headaches you'll run into is the problem of synonymy. One member might translate a word as "A" and another member might translate it as "B". Both are correct, and English can be confusing for translators without context because a great many English words belong to more than one part of speech, and translate to totally different words in the target language depending on that pos. (e.g. 'list' is both a noun and verb in English. Huge numbers of English words are part-of-speech ambiguous.)
This will be more of a problem for amateur translators than it would be for professionals. But in any case, the translator needs to see the source language (English in this case) in its original context. Don't try to send files of words, phrases and sentences to be translated. That will be a sure road to disaster.
And don't forget that when you translate, you also need to take into account different conventions for date formats and even numbers. Europeans use commas and periodsin numerals in totally different ways from Americans.
(1) If you do develop multiple language versions of the site, I'm sure you realize maintenance will become much more involved than it currently is. And when you translate FROM English, you'll find that the target languages typically require additional space, so you may have trouble resizing things to fit aesthetically.
(2) You may want to look into using some terminology management s/w. If you try to use members to supply translations, one of the headaches you'll run into is the problem of synonymy. One member might translate a word as "A" and another member might translate it as "B". Both are correct, and English can be confusing for translators without context because a great many English words belong to more than one part of speech, and translate to totally different words in the target language depending on that pos. (e.g. 'list' is both a noun and verb in English. Huge numbers of English words are part-of-speech ambiguous.)
This will be more of a problem for amateur translators than it would be for professionals. But in any case, the translator needs to see the source language (English in this case) in its original context. Don't try to send files of words, phrases and sentences to be translated. That will be a sure road to disaster.
(3) And don't forget that when you translate, you also need to take into account different conventions for date formats and even numbers. Europeans use commas and periodsin numerals in totally different ways from Americans.
(1) That's probably the biggest headache. Especially when things are made just to fit in a box to look nice, you'd get trouble when translating. Also, for images and logos with text, you'd need to do this manually, and that could get messy too.
(2) Maybe you know more than I do, but I've seen several sites with multiple translations made by users. Users could just translate everything they see to their language, save it in a certain way, and other users could use the translation. Sometimes the translation looks a little ugly, and you may have translated it differently, but it's well readable if the translator translated the text in context, and it's certainly better readable than when using Google or Babelfish :)
(3) That looks like a minor problem, really. I couldn't care less if you wrote 100,000 or 100.000 to say one hundred thousand, or 10:00pm or 22:00 to say ten o'clock in the evening. Even if you don't translate it at all, I doubt many people would complain about that.
A bigger problem I think would be that you'd have to set up a whole system to support multiple languages. Instead of [pseudocode]<menuitem>Play</menuitem>[/pseucode], you'd have to add code like [pseudocode]<menuitem>(if Language = English then Play else if Dutch then Speel else if German then Spiel else ...)</menuitem>[/pseudocode]... Of course this could be solved with arrays with strings for each language, but you'd still have to edit the code for EVERY visible line of text on the screen. That could give Chess.com a big headache.
Unnecessary, really.
"Babelfish (http://babelfish.yahoo.com/) is one site that already provides this functionality for free."
Babelfish?! Why do you hate people speaking other languages so much that you want them to read their language so mercilessly butchered? 
Companies like, say, Amazon seem to survive with several sites devoted to different languages. I don't think adding another language would hurt the chess site we're all addicted to.
Avoid Babelfish! Sure, it has improved but not to an acceptable level.
The first applications for translating were quite amusing. You could get some serious laughing attacks from this little game:
most of the world knows english because the of brits empire was pretty big
That is not my impression, judging by the level of spelling and grammar of many of the contributions to the forums. Incorrect English source - (not to mention idioms) - will seriously thwart attemps at automatic translation.
That is not my impression, judging by the level of spelling and grammar of many of the contributions to the forums. Incorrect English source - (not to mention idioms) - will seriously thwart attemps at automatic translation.
Not to mention the translation of Babelfish or Google Translator. I think this subject involves many things and there are a lot of problems to be solved in order to make it real, but it's the first step to make this great website actually global.
If we have a look to the country list we'll notice that more than a half of the users are from countries that have English as native or official language. Anything to do with the fact that the menus, messages etc are display only in this language?
how about a link to a language converter so they can translate english into there country so they can understand what we say ? just something i thought and for to so if they write in there language we can do the same
Another thought: I want to be able to go anywhere on this site and be able to read and comprhend what is written. Since I only speak English I would not want to have to pass over articles, forum posts, (anything that is posted by members), because they were in a different language. If that happens I will no longer feel comfortable and at home here. That would be sad.
Just pay or get google to add translation to your site.
So, it would appear that the vast majority of the erudite world population speaks English (perhaps 75%+ ?), therefore, what is truly to be gained with the tremendous effort that will be required to make such a change, not to mention all of the negative issues you posed and others unmentioned?
I'm not sure what you mean by "erudite", but maybe you should travel a bit more. People who speak English worldwide are certainly a minority in the world. I don't think the vast majority of chess players in the world speak english either, though it might be a considerable percentage.
I support the idea of having the help, instructions, menu bars in other languages so as to welcome more people. I've met people here who have some troubling getting along in the site because of language issues.
However, I don't think it makes much sense to translate the blogs or the forums.
By the way, English isn't my first language.
So, it would appear that the vast majority of the erudite world population speaks English (perhaps 75%+ ?), therefore, what is truly to be gained with the tremendous effort that will be required to make such a change, not to mention all of the negative issues you posed and others unmentioned?
I'm not sure what you mean by "erudite", but maybe you should travel a bit more. People who speak English worldwide are certainly a minority in the world. I don't think the vast majority of chess players in the world speak english either, though it might be a considerable percentage.
I support the idea of having the help, instructions, menu bars in other languages so as to welcome more people. I've met people here who have some troubling getting along in the site because of language issues.
However, I don't think it makes much sense to translate the blogs or the forums.
By the way, English isn't my first language.
Impressive English!
I play games using a language translating program in the background. It works for simple situations (of course I tried my hand at Italian with a guy I'm playing from Team Italy in a tournament and I screwed it up. It took about three lines in English to straighten it out. You know, this business of screwing around with my translator could work to my advantage from a psychological standpoint. A little well placed jibberish and they lose concentration............I'd never do that).
Erik. Make a page that people can open up where they can copy text such as when playing a game against someone or a comment in forums and then they can translate it on this seperate page into another language. Also if they wanted to comment in forums but only know russian for example. they can use the translation page to type what they want to say in russian and then translate that back into english so that they can speak in the forums.
Babelfish (http://babelfish.yahoo.com/) is one site that already provides this functionality for free.