Localized weblog services?

May 17, 2002 8:07 AM

Pick a language, any language.

LiveJournal has added support for its users to translate the entire site into other languages. Translation teams have formed for over twenty languages, with more on the way.

Are there other localized weblog services out there that anyone is aware of?
posted by insomnia_lj to General Weblog-Related at 8:07 AM (7 comments total)

sounds interesting, insomnia, except that i don't think it's fair of you, to promote livejournal here.
posted by moz at 8:15 AM on May 17, 2002

I might be a LiveJournal volunteer and staffmember, but I'm on unemployment right now like everyone else, and it's not my site. I figured it was newsworthy.

I could rattle off a few more likely self-links, however.
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:39 AM on May 17, 2002

It's a good idea. I recently switched from Blogger to Movable Type, partly because I could easily translate the MT interface and hack the date formatting into Welsh.

YACCS commenting system has various language options, and they're open to adding more.
posted by ceiriog at 8:53 AM on May 17, 2002

I don't mean to jump on you or create the pile-on, I just want to be clear that mild protest (and that's only as strong as it is) is warranted. insomnia_lj, The two links you point to give no financial benefit to the people linking them, halcyon and succa were asking for advice and help for their personal projects and problems, and were borderline as to what is allowed, whereas LiveJournal is a business, and this is vaguely a promotional post to spread the good word about your product's upgrade.

That said, I've heard movabletype will soon have its posting interface working in almost any language, which will be similar to this.

You said this new feature can "translate the entire site into other languages" and I thought it was a babelfish type of deal, where an entire blog can be read by anyone on earth, but it appears to just be the posting interface and error messages? I guess to be clear, you mean you can translate the entire LiveJournal posting site into other languages?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:12 AM on May 17, 2002

The translation is for the interface, all error messages, the documentation, and the features... in other words, the core of the site.

Translation of weblog pages is best handled through something like the Google Translate bookmarklet, I find. One-click translation is pretty sweet...

However, it would be an easy thing to take advantage of Google's generous nature and add links to a site like this:
English // Deutsch // Espanol // Italiano // Francais // Portugues

For some reason, Google doesn't like translating MetaFilter into other languages, however.
posted by insomnia_lj at 11:09 AM on May 17, 2002

For some reason, Google doesn't like translating MetaFilter into other languages, however.

Weird. I get some strange mime-type download problem off the google server too.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:13 AM on May 17, 2002

insomnia_lj: this is a good post and worth discussing, I suspect that most opf the hyper meta-critical mefiosi can tell just from your username where you stand and make up their own minds from there on.

It is interesting how the internet is broadening into other languages, often through community effort. OpenOffice.org, a prject that I volunteer at has a community translation and localisation effort as well.
posted by nedrichards at 3:14 PM on May 19, 2002