Website business?

What is the best practices (business optimal) for localization of a website?

• For a website like a marketplace or similar, what is the best approach for localization if majority of the content is in one language, but some user-generated content is in other languages? There are so many approaches to this that I am getting confused, I am interested in the most cost-effective business optimal approach for this. Some typical approaches; * Website in one language, accept content in many languages * Website in one language, only accept content in one language (reject other content) * Website in one language, content in the same language by translating to main language if content is not main language * Website in multiple languages, content is outputted as is for each localized version of the website, that is, content is duplicated for each language version of the website * Website in multiple languages, content belongs to the same language version of the website as the contents language is. That is, english content for english version of the website, german content for german version fo the website and so on. * tld vs subdomain vs directory for localization?

• Answer:

  First off, any solution that requires auto-translation of content will be sub-optimal, at least with our current technology. I don't believe that we have the technology sufficient enough to feasibly translate content in every possible nuance automatically. Manual translation, on the other hand, is going to be such a chore. The effort required directly scales with the amount of content your users are generating, and most of the time, you want your users to submit as much as possible, so this quickly becomes very unattractive. So translation of content, scratch that. Secondly, why exactly do you want to segregate content based on language? I ask because, then you have to ask, are the pros worth the cons of doing that? Now, I don't know what your application is, but let me just say that there will be use cases when it is forgivable (or even downright recommended) to have global content standing side-by-side. Do give it a double and a triple consideration whether segregation is really what you want. Lastly, if people will be submitting content in one language, I'd be assuming that they (or at least the people intended on reading the content) will be expecting to read the site in the same language as well. Again, though, I don't know your app. It just makes most sense. So I'd suggest you build a site that caters itself in multiple languages. That's definitely going to take more effort and cost than a single-language site, but it probably is best for user experience. How exactly to do that, well, that's probably the most subjective topic to give a concrete answer to. Easiest would probably be to just have static copies of the website in multiple languages.