I just read a comment by Peter on my European Silicon valley post, and he mentions once again one of the biggest reasons why Europe is having problems with keeping up with the Americans. There are just to many languages (that is more than one). The solution most European startups now use is just to make an English version and forget about the rest.. That might work to get the American and Uk market, and also the more tech savvy people from other countries, but the majority in French, Germany and Spain (thats South America and Mexico too) just won’t use it. And if you’re idea is good, you will see a translated copy of your idea sooner or later. And personally I really like those sites that make an effort to have a Dutch version (although many times I stick to English), just because they are showing that they understand that not the whole world is English.

Problem: Only a few sites are multilingual, and therefore most of them will miss the mass-market in Europe

Reason 1: It is harder to build a multilingual site
So why are there so few sites multilingual.. well first thing it’s harder to build, you can’t use “hard coded” text anymore, everything needs to be variable, that is a problem that is a bit harder to solve, so I leave that up to the tech guys.

Reason 2: It’s expensive to hire translators
To get a site multilingual you need people to translate it, and this is expensive stuff, and many not all, don’t understand much of the web stuff, so you have to let someone check all their translations too.

Solution: Build a site that enables everyone to make translations in their own language
Many of the words on websites are used over and over again everywhere, words and sentences as “click here”, “subscribe”, “search”, “login”, “add to cart” etc. All those words are also already translated by people a million times. So wouldn’t it be a great idea to save all these translations in one big database where everyone can add new translations, and ask for more translations. If that file is downloadable you can just check all the words you need, load them in your database and your site is multilingual from day one!

Bonus features: Packages and Plugins
You can make packages too like “shop”, “forum”, “web2.0 site” etc. And you can check how many languages you want to download at first. And someone could build a Wordpress plug in (well there is one already) and a PHPBB plugin and a Vanilla forum plugin and so much more

Problems: Fuck ups
It has to be open so it’s easy to fuck up. It are the people that don’t speak nine languages that download those packages, so after a while there should be some “official” release by people who are to “trusted”

Questions
Q: Why is this different than a wiktionary
A: It isnt really, its just more focused on sites and not on everything, and for every “item” there can only be one translation, not many.

Q: Are you really the first to come up with this?
A: Don’t know, couldn’t find any other initiatives, it would be cool if it’s already been solved though.

Q: What will happen to the words specific to my site that are not on the translation site?
A: The original English (or native) text of your site will fill up that gap. My believe is that a half translated site is still better than not a translation at all

Comments and questions are all welcome in the comments section