As the dev cycle for the first release of rehash winds down (one remaining bug before we're ready to deploy), I've turned my attention another large site-related project, specifically the possibility of internationalizing and localizing the site. Internationalizing a very large legacy codebase is a lot of work, and I want to gauge interest. For clarification, this work would translate the UI, and the site interface itself, and not the articles. Historically, I'm aware of two successful translation project, BarraPunto, and Slashdot.JP. However, both of those projects did so by simply rewriting the templates in their native language instead of using a more flexible system that would allow for dynamic processing.
After a few hours of cursing, I was successful in modifying rehash to use Locale::Maketext::Lexicon, and load translations dynamically from gettext when a template is loaded. The practical upshot is that if I continue with this effort, we will be able to import all the static strings in rehash, and translate them through any service that can handle standard gettext POT files (such as Launchpad Rosetta), then have rehash load the specific language on the fly depending on a user's settings, or their browsers preferences. This also has the benefit that translators would only require a minimal amount of HTML knowledge would be required to successfully translate rehash.
What I want to know is the following:
- Is there significant interest to prioritize this project?
- Are there enough people who are willing to engage in translating rehash to their native language?
- Assuming there is a successful translation committed and launched, would people be interested in running a version of SN in their own native language?
As long as the first two answers are yes, I'll push to get a localized codebase in place for the next rehash development cycle (likely landing in July or August). Please note there is a *lot* of strings to be translated, I'm expecting upwards of a couple thousand once I've finished scrubbing through all the templates and libraries. If you are interested in this, please note your native language below, and I'll get in contact with you once we're ready to start doing translation work.
slashlithium~/src/rehash-ncommander$ bin/generate-pot-files * themes/default/templates/about;about;default - Total strings extracted : 21 * themes/default/templates/admin;menu;default - Total strings extracted : 7 * themes/default/templates/articlemoved;misc;default - Total strings extracted : 3 * themes/default/templates/bannedtext_ipid;misc;default - Total strings extracted : 2 * themes/default/templates/bannedtext_palm;misc;default - Total strings extracted : 2 * themes/default/templates/main;404;default - Total strings extracted : 11 READING PO FILE : i18n/rehash.pot WRITING PO FILE : ./i18n/rehash.pot DONE
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:09AM
Localizing the news flow may create a mental box where you awareness horizons ends with your national or regional borders. Exposure to other events and ideas from foreign places challenge your thinking. So something may be lost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @04:26PM
The majority of people browsing this site are American so there is already localized American content included. Since the majority exists, it may already be dissuading foreigners from posting foreign content because not clear that this is an international news site. If there were a similarly localized Indian, South American, East European, or whatever site; it could facilitate more content for this site with a translated international section if a sufficiently dedicated group in each locale existed for editing/story adding.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by quadrox on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:09AM
To be clear: If there are volunteers who want to do work on localization, that is of course entirely up to them.
That being said, I don't see any of this to be part of the SN mission. Any software development that is done as part of SN is incidental - it is a means to and end, the end being a site where we can share stories and discuss them.
I would ask any volunteer to prioritise submitting, editing, moderating, commenting ahead of localisation. But that is just my humble opinion - any volunteers are of course free to do as they wish.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:32PM
I tend to agree, that while possible, its not all that useful.
Especially when there is no intent to translate the articles.
It seem pointless in this day and age when you can simply read the site through google translate if one were so inclined.
Being all text, google translate converts the whole site. I've read some Russian tech sites via translate, and it worked
very well.
I just don't see the point of the effort.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @08:42PM
This.
Do *I* think we *need* it? No, I do not. Being able to operate SN in another language may be of some value; but as the content is english; having the menus in another language isn't likely going to be that valuable to anyone. here or that valuable to anyone who might join. If someone wants to do it; that is up to them. I just don't think it would be a community priority.
As for SN spinoffs in other languages; that may well be valuable for others but I don't think that would add anything to this community. And at worst it may actively fragment it. As people here will go off and try an
-cheers
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:31AM
if the articles aren't translated also, there's probably not much point
no sense being able to read the menu but not the content
translating menu and content otoh... (adds a whole new level of editing difficulty but may broaden the readership potential)
also, probably tough getting a decent number of volunteers that do perl
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NCommander on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:34AM
It's not perl. The translations file looks like this:
#. (origin)
#: themes/default/templates/main;404;default:22
#, perl-maketext-format
msgid "The requested URL (%1) was not found."
msgstr ""
Basically fill in the blank. In some places, because the layout of the page may have to change, there are HTML tags and such but no raw perl to manage.
I won't mind having a non-English version of SN, but translating the UI would be a prelude to that, as well as recruiting a new editorial team to be able manage it. I only speak English, a little Spanish, and bad English.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:47AM
Just refactor the code so a different language template can be sub'ed if/when desired. Seems like you already done that. And build a MexPanish template for testing.
For now, though, like the AC noted, don't see a point displaying vato menu with gringo articles.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by martyb on Tuesday May 19 2015, @01:11PM
A few things come to mind.
First, I sense that our community is not sufficiently large at this moment to warrant this. Down the road, though, I think this is a *great* idea. If we provide alternate 'versions' of the site in other languages, I believe any given story will suffer. It's the 'Network Effect' and I would rather see our existing community grow prior to embarking on providing alternate language implementations.
Second, This is *great* for proofreading the existing UI! I can't wait to see all the extracted text strings and pore over them with a fine-toothed comb (heh. translate THAT) to identify, for example, inconsistent capitalization and spacing on Button elements.
Third, there's some things about internationalization that defy simple substitution. I read a great article a few months ago but cannot locate it now. It was a (possibly fictional) account of trying to internationalize messages into Russian (Polish?). As I recall, the example was something mundane like returning the number of files found for a search. Simple parameterization was inadequate.
looks ugly when the substituted parameter has the value "1". So, the developer adds a test of whether the count is singular or not.
Except, that in that language, simple translation like that fails (in English think enumeration like First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth instead of One, Two, Three, Four, Five.) I *really* wish I could locate the original article — this by no means does it justice. Hopefully I've provided enough info that it will jog someone's memory and they can reply with a link.
Further, the amount of space required on the screen to represent the *concept* in each message may be very different. This potentially leads to a cascade of problems, especially on small-screen devices. Take a look at some of the 'slashboxes' and I'd be surprised if all of those entries, after translation, will still fit in the limited space provided. So now you need to increase the size of those boxes to accommodate the largest message, so now you have a lot of white space with short text entries, and ... you get the point.
tl;dr: short-term, knock your socks off but leave the strings in English. There's MUCH more to this than meets the eye. Here be dragons.
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:03PM
I vaguely remember that article too. The core problem is that a lot of languages have more than one plural form for nouns, depending on the number. This includes the entire Slavic and Baltic families, Arabic, Irish, Icelandic and a couple others. More information:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Localization/Localization_and_Plurals [mozilla.org]
http://localization-guide.readthedocs.org/en/latest/l10n/pluralforms.html [readthedocs.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:14PM
(Score: 2) by ticho on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:49PM
Fortunately, gettext handles this quite gracefully, if (and that's a big if) the developer does his job properly.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:51PM
Having spent several years learning and using Russian
So give us an opinion then: How does google translate do on the SN home page: https://goo.gl/AbvqMm [goo.gl]
Clearly not everything is likely to translate, but I've read the reverse translations
and they are usable.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday May 19 2015, @09:24PM
I didn't realise that anyone was suggesting that each page that needs to be translated on the fly is going to be submitted to Google for translation.
But the problem remains that where in English there are only usually two visually different forms of a word - singular and plural - there exist many different combinations in other languages. Providing a one-to-one translation is not always simple. A practical example; the front page shows how many messages are waiting for you to read. In English it is either (1) message or (more than 1) messages. In Slavonic languages it is not uncommon for 1,2-4,5+ to require different forms (cases) of the word 'message(s)'. In English you can also correctly say 'with 5 messages' , but in Slavonic languages the word 'with' requires the instrumental case - and the word 'messages' is written differently than previously stated. There are many such characteristics that further complicate the translation.
The task is do-able, but one mustn't underestimate the size of the task that NCommander is proposing. It would be a significant effort for what appears to be, from my particular viewpoint, very little gain. FatPhil's suggestion of reducing the costs of running the site is more important than translating the front page into numerous languages - especially as you have demonstrated that Google could do the job reasonably well for those that want it. But I realise that it is not as interesting a challenge than writing a clever bit of software, unless there are some other benefits of doing the translation that are not immediately apparent to us all?
Do we need a front page in different languages? No. Could we use an internal messaging system (e.g. to provide feedback on submissions, to let people know when their subs expire etc.)? Yes. Could we use an improved editor for changing a submission to something suitable for the front page? Yes. Could we benefit from more automatic processing of submissions to check links, carry out routine formatting, correcting spelling etc? Yes. Could we have secure VNC-type connections to the dev system so that both trainer and trainee can see the same page when new editors have to learn how to do the job? And that is only with my Editor's hat on. Can we have a way of entering a comment and then returning to the thread at the point where the comment was inserted? Can we have different ACs indicated by the addition of a number so that we can follow who is saying what to whom in a thread? Now some of these are in the pipeline but we haven't got them yet. When we have done all these, and also the things that others have been asking for, then that is the time to start looking for 'I-wonder-if-we-could...' tasks to keep people busy.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 20 2015, @12:27AM
I didn't realise that anyone was suggesting that each page that needs to be translated on the fly is going to be submitted to Google for translation.
No, that wasn't what I was suggesting either. All I mentioned it for was to point out that the site is accessible in many languages, some with bettr translations than others, but most of the translations are good enough to get by, and all of them less work for out much overworked staff.
I too think there is too little gain to waste our commander's time on this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday May 20 2015, @08:34AM
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:11PM
Hah! Found it. [cpan.org]
I remember reading that article a few years back. I thought I had it bookmarked, but apparently not... had to search for it.
Interestingly, it seems there was a SoylentNews submission [soylentnews.org] about it a few months ago. I seem to have missed that one :)
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday May 22 2015, @05:38PM
No wonder it sounded familiar -- I wrote that story! Thanks for finding it and replying!
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 1) by Yates on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:58PM
A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen To You [cpan.org]
(Score: 1) by martyb on Friday May 22 2015, @09:36PM
Yes! That's the one -- thanks!
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Tuesday May 19 2015, @04:12PM
You don't speak cursive English? I know I do from time to time, mostly when unexpected things happen.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bryan on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:57PM
I implemented machine translated content (stories and comments) on Pipedot [pipedot.org] a few months ago. The idea was that you could type in any language you want, and the site will automatically translate your comment [pipedot.org] into English. Alternatively, you can change your display language (in your profile settings) to view the entire site in your chosen language.
This functionality actually started out as an April Fools joke. On April 1st [pipedot.org], I set the default language of the site to Esperanto [wikipedia.org] - the universal language! Of course, I don't think its seen much of any use or interest since then.
(Score: 2) by jmoschner on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:17PM
I don't think it is worth it at this time. Perhaps one the user base has grown.
Maybe as a compromise consider putting the bing [bing.com] or google [google.com] translation widget into each page so people can translate if they so wish without it taking up much dev time. Don't know, just an idea.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:32AM
Localizations are ok, IF you can choose a different language easily (WITHOUT needing an account).
Personally I just want English (which is not my mothertongue).
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:35AM
The default would be whatever your browser sends. Shouldn't be hard to simply add a dropdown box that sets a cookie to overwrite that.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:52PM
What if I use Tor, which sends the same browser strings for everyone? And what if cookies are not allowed either?
This will just lead to more people being exposed unnecessarily to outsiders and it might be more possible to link posters to their posts than it already is.
Some people adopt styles of other posters and change their writing style for different comments, sometimes even on the same story. And not use their personal style to try and get their identities mixed up making it difficult for government criminals.
I think its a bad idea.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:36PM
And what if cookies are not allowed either?
The peasants have no cookies? Let them eat localForage. [github.com]
(Score: 1) by andersjm on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:57PM
I'm not looking forward to seeing mixed-language gobbledygook in my browser, which is the direction in which you're heading.
Will you hold off upgrades until all translations are fully updated? Will you treat every missing translation as a bug? I rather doubt it. And that means all your language files will be incomplete pretty much all the time.
A partial translation can be of some use for a website where some of the users don't speak any English. But SN is not such a website. I suggest you belay this until there's an actual need, that is to say, until someone's setting up an SN clone with content in a different language.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:28PM
Your native language is German?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @01:03PM
No, you have 9 more guesses.
(Score: 2) by jbernardo on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:15PM
French and you are tired of being shown sites in Dutch/Flemish?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:35PM
Dutch?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:57PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈 - Give us ribbiti or make us croak! 🐸
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:03PM
D actually.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ticho on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:35AM
What would be the point?
If it is about allowing users to set a language in their preferences, that's useless - the content is still in English, so it will look weird, and anyone who can't read English articles and comments has no reason to be here in the first place.
If it's about putting up separate localized sites (soylentnews.de, .it, .cn, ...), most of them will be empty. We barely get enough comments for many stories here on .org as it is, why fragment userbase even more?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:44AM
In my opinion, this should remain an English-language site, with an English interface.
If it interests someone to produce localisation support and localisations I can only say "good work". That being said: I believe deploying localised "skins" would be detrimental. There may be other views - I'm only one person with my own individual outlook.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:45AM
Given that the contents of SN will be in English, I see no reason to translate anything. I find having a mix of languages on the screen to be annoying.
Localized versions? Not for SoylentNews, no - I think many of us come here precisely because of the international aspects. On the other hand, maybe this could turn into something like StackOverflow, where there are different sorts of sites, with different audiences, all running off of essentially the same code base. Is that something that the developers want to pursue?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @11:12AM
It only makes sense if the articles are translated as well...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sudo rm -rf on Tuesday May 19 2015, @11:31AM
My native language is German. Personally, I prefer English as a UI language for many reasons (note that not everything might apply to SoylentNews):
Translations are almost always bad, regardless of the direction. A lot of times nuances get lost, jokes in general are *very* hard to translate, irony quite impossible.
As others pointed out, different languages for UI and for content is confusing, especially for future visitors. E.g. "SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop." If this string is translated, but the submission still has to be in English, it has to be pointed out explicitly.
Error messages. They'd have to be translated as well, resulting in frustrating searches for what they *really* mean. (Bad) example: "Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Filter error: Please enter a Subject." It is very hard to find solutions to localized error messages on the Internet if you don't know the original one.
Frankly, I don't like the idea of localization very much. But if the community decides to follow that path, I could certainly help out with a few translations.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:07PM
There are also a great wealth of idioms of english speech that come and go so quickly that even native speakers have to resort to the Urban Dictionary just to know what the hell someone is talking about.
On english help websites or mailing lists, you eventually pick up on faulty translations have propagated into the speech of non-English speakers.
A native spanish speaker will often post something like: "Doubts about postfix" when and english speaker would say "Questions about postfix"
A native german speaker will say "its been broken since 5 years" where an english speaker would say "its been broken for 5 years" (probably also talking about postfix).
I'm not sure how any translate engines would pick up on those.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:26AM
Piggy backing on sudo rm -rf, I'm an American living in Germany. So far, I've found that German IT people almost universally read their tech in English... usually by necessity as almost anything computer related is in English. Anything related to IT that is done in German is usually confined within the borders of Germany and it usually deals with customers or company-internal documentation. Although I think it would be awesome to see, I don't think there would be a lot of use for a German Soylent News and I don't think it would be worth the effort.
Just my 2 cents.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday May 19 2015, @11:35AM
I do not think it is priority.
I think any new code should be written with the idea of allowing localisation of the interface in mind, but I don't see the merit in a large exercise, right now, to enable an international interface.
Of course, I have only one voice, and there may be a significant number of others clamouring for it, in which case I would go with the flow. I'm not against the idea in principle, I just don't see the need right now.
I'm not asking for it, but have no objection if many other people are.
(Score: 5, Funny) by deimtee on Tuesday May 19 2015, @11:39AM
Why don't you follow the time-honoured British tradition and simply speak loudly and slowly for the foreigners. (bold and fontsize +2)?
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @01:40PM
Oh, I see! You're volunteering to go out to get some meat. Not necessary! We have meat here. WE HAVE MEAT HERE IN ZE BUILDING!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:50PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:40PM
When you're in a foreign country and you ask someone "Where is the bus?" And they say "Nunna-kunnna." What do you do? Say it louder and slower, "WHERE, IS, THE, BUS!?".
That's so dumb right? I mean try that the other way around; someone comes up to you and says "Nunna-kunnan". And you say "I'm sorry, I don't understand." "NU, - NNA, KU, - NNNA!" ... Oh sorry, it's just over there.
-- Howie Mandell
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:48PM
Why don't you follow the time-honoured British tradition and simply speak loudly and slowly for the foreigners. (bold and fontsize +2)?
I always thought that was a uniquely american trait. In fact we fun shortwave radio broadcasts in "Special English" (in addition to just about every language on earth). We even have a website http://learningenglish.voanews.com/ [voanews.com] which will read you the stories in Special English.
(It used to be called simple english on radio, but apparently the meaning of that was too obvious and the political correctness jumped in.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2015, @10:28AM
Americans speak loudly all the time. The British only speak loudly and slowly when talking to those who don't understand english.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @08:27PM
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:10PM
Can you pipe those pot files?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:48PM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Geezer on Tuesday May 19 2015, @01:55PM
Actually, the educated Chinese I've known far and away prefer English. For all its faults, English is head-and-shoulders easier to master and doesn't have arcane vocabulary/jargon issues where "auxiliary contact" translates into something like "great bird with no wings flying under the water with smokestack" or some such.
My upper bosses are all Chinese and Chinese-speaking Indonesians, and they frown on anything but English for all business/engineering matters. My former Japanese overlords were much the same way, and laughed mightily at American and Aussie attempts at Asian linguistics.
Ordering lunch is another matter. :)
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:55PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:23PM
SN is already translated into my locale. What's more, I'm monolingual, and somewhat ethnocentric. So - it really doesn't matter to me.
I would suggest though, that opinions be weighted according to people's locations. If the international users want the work done, and especially if those users are willing to get involved, then by all means go for it.
The majority of users are probably like me, and simply don't give a flip, so any negative votes from among us should probably be discounted about 90%, give or take 10%.
I said what I said. - Sophie Cunningham
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:23PM
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:15PM
Perfection is not achieved not when there are no more features to add, but when there's no more bloat that needs stripping away.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:33AM
absolutely!
i'd much rather have a way to show new comments on an article since the last time i read it *without* having to change the sort order.
in fact how about an "Ask Soylent" post, along the lines of...
The devs are going to have some time available soon, what ONE feature would you like to see implemented that would encourage you to contribute more to discussions?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:36PM
I'd prefer to have stories with hundred/s of comments, rather than many stories with only a few comments. The readership here is intelligent enough to present well-considered observations and questions in many different areas, and I'd like to see many more peoples' input on the stories, even if it was only for a trial period.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:37AM
do you have any ideas for how to accomplish that?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday May 20 2015, @05:08PM
Maybe 2/4/6 stories a day. I suspect the readership on this site skews somewhat older, with people in routines and desk jobs, who could check the site in the morning, at lunch, late afternoon, etc. They'd then have more time to review their experience or questions on the topic, after which they could put in their carefully considered, and hopefully higher-quality 2/4/8/128 bits accordingly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:15PM
I don't think SN is suffering from too many stories. I only look at the ones that interest me, and when I'm done with those I go elsewhere, rarely do I go and read stories that I passed over the first time. If there were fewer stories here, I'd check less often, or maybe even not at all.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by throwaway28 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @05:42PM
Nune, tute de la korpo skribis en anglo. Do, nenial por traduki la kapo.
---
As long as english or bad english remains the lingua franca of the commenters, there's no reason to translate the UI yet.
---
Sed, mi esperas ke iam, iam tre malproksima, tio lingvo farigxos la lingua franca.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:03PM
Please don't.
There's lots of work to be done as is. Also The userbase isn't huge in itself, and it would end up fragmenting, probably.
This would just result in less quality overall, I think. Higher editorial overload with same resources, less comments, cultural horizon. I think it's not a good idea.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:45PM
Having localization would certainly make it easier to employ the software for other sites in another language. But for Soylent News, I don't see how it would help: The stories are in English, and if you can't understand enough English to cope with the interface, you certainly won't be able to understand the stories.
BTW, I'm German, but I don't think I'd profit from German localisation. Indeed, it may make it harder to communicate about the site. You'd might questions like "What is this setting for? It's called 'Grundmodifizierer' in the German version …"
Note that "Grundmodifizierer" is a bad literal translation of "Reason Modifier" to German. However I can't immediately think of a good one. That's another problem with localizations: You often end up with translations that leave you puzzling what is actually meant.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Balderdash on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:20PM
No.
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 2) by acharax on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:27PM
I second this sentiment.
Part of why I come to a site like this is precisely because it is not localized in any fashion.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:32PM
Should have mentioned the nexus feature in this post.
Nexuses will allow entire new sites to be folded into the SoylentNews bandwagon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @09:25PM
can we balance the AMERICAN content with more NATIONAL news?
(Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:14PM
They say there's no point in non-English parts of SN until there's a built interest for it, but you will never have that interest accumulate unless the opportunity is presented. Remember that it's not just language but perspective. Speakers of certain languages tend to be in different parts of the world and will tend to contribute different articles that North Americans and Western Europeans won't.