Global Languages and Social Media

April 14, 2008 · Comments

rosetta stone New friend Yuval asked a great question, to which I have no answer. He is starting a blog in Israel, where Hebrew is the primary language. Most of his colleagues and friends speak both Hebrew and English (at least!), but here’s the rub: if Yuval blogs in Hebrew, his friends and colleagues will be more engaged. If he blogs in English, he gets a potential larger audience.

Two Israeli bloggers I’m friends with are Blonde 2.0 and Kfir Pravda. They both blog in English, and if you see what they’re up to, they have fairly global audiences and interests. With that in mind, I lean towards going with English for the majority if posts.

And yet ( Dr. Elie Wiesel got me saying that), and yet, the Israelis I know are proud of their heritage and their language, and might give more points to a blog written in Hebrew.

What Should Yuval Do?

Whether you’re Israeli or not, how do you think the global language consideration should be handled? My friends from Montreal blog and podcast in both, because Canada promotes a bilingual culture, but Yuval isn’t exactly eager to write two posts for the price of one every day.

What’s your counsel to Yuval?

Photo credit, zeerood

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  • Lid
    I wonder if there is the possibility of using an automated system to offer the two without added work for Yuval?
  • I r/w both French and Dutch as well as my native English. Whilst I blog in English, I read from a lot of Dutch bloggers who are often faced with the same dilemma as your friend as many speak English. Many of the blogs tend to be in Dutch when the topic is about 'personal' activities, 'soapbox issues' or politics but in English if it is business-related or technical. And it seems quite 'normal' to read in both languages in this way.
  • The answer is that he should blog in both English and Hebrew. If he's truly dedicated and if this really is that big of a quandary, he will take the extra time to blog in both. This way he gets the respect of his colleagues and also opens himself up to a larger audience.
  • Jonathan
    Doesn't it depend on what are his objectives for blogging? If he is looking to reach a global audience then he needs to blog in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Hebrew.

    If he wants to develop a strong following post in Hebrew for most items and when he feels that something needs a global audience post in both or English.

    So many Israelis speak English could he not find someone (a student perhaps) to translate his posts if it's the effort is too much for him?
  • jon
    What's his purpose? If his core audience, the people that he wants most to connect with are reading Hebrew, or are most influenced by Hebrew, then that is an easy choice. Influence with your core can't be traded simply for reach.

    Further, if he is a new blogger, start where it's easiest. Then plan to grow. Build your experience locally and let growth come out of that experience. As he finds his voice, he may opt to double post, or we may decide to learn Hebrew...especially if the voice is compelling.
  • I think it depends on the language and the circumstances of the country - and the purpose of the blog itself. In my native New Zealand, all efforts to write/communicate in Maori should be encouraged and are to be commended because it promotes and stimulates use of the language.

    In Indonesia, where I live now, there is a large blogging community who blog in bahasa Indonesia - even though I suspect that a good part of their audiences can read English. This may be because many of them feel more comfortable with the language, or are sensitive to the non-English reading audience. A lot of these blogs are have policital content, which makes it all the more important that they write in Indonesian - not English.
  • Could keep two blogs. That's more work, but keep in mind that different languages often means different audiences with different interests. Plenty of expat China bloggers keep a separate Chinese blog aimed at locals (or just for practice).
  • And there's an interesting sidebar question: what would blogging look and feel like if we had a local blog that related only to our local life as a second side-blog to what we were already covering? Hmmm.
  • The obvious solution to me is that what Yuval needs is a partner to co-maintain "Yuval in English." Yuval can write in Hebrew mostly, english when he wants, and his partner can translate whichever one Yuval writes the intial post in, and echo it to the other side. Possibly, with the translator's own comments and thoughts in a privileged place.

    Seems like a win-win could be easily worked out if Yuval can find the right person.
  • Have some postings in English and some in Hebrew.
    This is the efficient way to cover both global and local issues. Does no harm to point out to monoglot English speakers that there are other languages!
  • Yuval should maintain 2 blogs and blog on each half as much. It would be a shame for him to abandon his Hebrew when Israelis need, now more than ever, an advocated in the modern tech world. In order to satisfy this, Israelis need to know Yuval has his finger on the local pulse and is a worldly advocate in English as well where he will ultimately grow his greatest audience an share his culture with the world.
  • As a person who lives in Israel, I know that there are is a developed blogging culture in Hebrew, and he could get a fair amount of readers in Hebrew. Having said that, if he wants to reach readers outside of Israel, he really needs to blog in English, which I would consider the language of the web.
  • As others have opined, blogging in both languages is the only good solution, IMO. We have several customers who do this. Probably the best answer (also above) is to not just to translate all articles, but to do each article in one language according to its target or who would be most interested.

    There are probably other blog platforms that do more than one language, but the one I know about is Serendipity (s9y.org). It allows any number of languages on a per-post basis and navigation in about 30 languages. Unfortunately, I believe Hebrew is not among them.

    I'll note in passing, that one thing that has been asked for on Ning has been simultaneous multiple languages for communities.
  • Blog in whatever your audience demands most.
  • I asked myself this question long time ago, and thought that blogging in your own language would have been better. After more than 2 yrs into it i changed my mind and today i would probably start writing in English. You get a larger audience, no doubt about it.
  • I blog both in English (@ red66.com) and in Spanish (@ technosailor.com). While it is indeed more work, and I sometimes blog the same content in both languages, it does give me access to two entirely different audiences (yes, I'm sure there's overlap).

    It depends on who you want to reach and how comfortable you're with either option...

    For starters, I'd try to stay focused on just one language. Blogging regularly is hard enough as it is... no need to make it more complicated until you've learned the ropes.
  • We are blogging in Hebrew for 2 years on etf.co.il, for a specific target audience (financial consultants), and the content is good for English speakers as well. So we know the dilemma very well.
    In one point of time, we wanted to use the content for an English website, so we decided to translate it. The costs were very high, and we couldn't find a low-cost solution to translate from Hebrew to English all around the web. That's when we understood that this is not only ours need. So - we developed a solution and we called it OneHourTranslation.com
    It's already working and people already buy.
  • I'm in the same boat as Yuval. I'm blogging in English, even I'm not an expert in English, and some friends ask me to post in Spanish.

    In a future I'm going to blog in the two languages in two blogs. I hate those blogs where you read five posts in English two in Spanish and another one in English. My approach to this is not posting the very same content in the two blogs. This avoids the write two for the price of one.

    If I have to choose just a language I stay with English because I can reach a larger audience from many places in the world.
  • duh, have two blogs, one in Hebrew with concerns targeted to the Hebrew-readers and one with topics for the world at large.

    I think what this is saying is "how does he (and us) please everyone and still get the maximum amount of hits', well you can't and blogging for statistics generally leads to disapointment, you can't be too rich, too thin or have enough readers to be truely happy if you are concerned with those things!
  • Ed M
    Besides Yaron suggestion of his service, OneHourTranslation.com, there are several technical solutions that Yuval has to blog in multiple languages. If he choose to self publish and uses WordPress there are software plug-ins like jLanguage or Gengo/Mocha. Or Yuval could use a translation service, like OneHourTranslation.com or WorldWideLexicon.org, which will translate his blog into other languages and/or provide tools to allow the community to translate for you. One of the advantages of WorldWideLexicon.org is the blogging tools they provide.

    Note there could be more technical/software/web-based services than those I've mentioned here so Yuval should do a quick survey of solutions out there. But knowing about the different technical solutions should help him in making his decision. A copy of my slides during my PodCamp Boston 2 talk covering multi-lingual solutions for blogging/podcasting/video blogging can be found here.
  • Niche blogging can be powerful. If Yuval blogs in Hebrew, he may alienate non-Hebrew speakers, but he may find it easier to penetrate the audience that do. It really comes down to the scope of his blog.

    Is it focused on subjects that those who speak Hebrew would be interested in, but would, by and large, not have a large draw outside that community? If so, Hebrew is a good choice.

    Is it focused on subjects that, while of interest to Hebrew speakers are also of great interest outside that community? If so, English is probably best.
  • Hi Chris, Hi all.
    I thank you all for the interesting feedback.
    Obviously blogging in both would be perfect, but it really is a matter of available resources, not just laziness.
    It is a blog about personal stories, about life in Israel, and about political issues, sometimes.
    The obvious target is my friends, but I was hoping that someone out there in the world would also find life here in this crazy land interesting.
    I thought about separating into 2 blogs, but that would mean a lot of time between posts (I'm a once a week guy as it is).
    My big issue is this: Israel has an active Blogging community. I can get into other Blogs, comment and such, and get quite easily some readership. But that is the end of the line. The potential readership is limited.
    However, hunting for readers in English is much harder, as it is a huge ocean out there, and it will be much harder, I think...
    Thanks again Chris (and all), for taking the time to address the Issue.
  • Hi Yuval,

    I agree with all those who think you should write all your posts in both languages: it's the only way to reach both audiences properly and at the same time let them know that you bridge not only two languages but two (very different) global cultures and, what's more, from an area of the world which is very much in many people's mind for a whole host of reasons.

    Monolingual readers won't have to deal with posts in the language they didn't understand if you set up the directory structure and homepage of your blog properly:

    base.com/english/category-in-english/post-title-english
    base.com/hebrew/category-in-hebrew/post-title-hebrew

    You can do the same thing with your RSS feeds with the blogging platform or via feedburner.

    I've just done this very thing with my own blog - I'm a professional translator (Spanish-English).

    And I think you should definitely take the time to translate your own posts - the translation is always much quicker than the original, once you've finished editing it and you have your ideas clear, although you have to pay attention to a few technical details when you prepare the posts.

    Saludos.
  • I would suggest the LingoTip site for building a human-translated multilingual blog, such as lingotip.blogspot.com
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