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UO Home Page Becomes Multilingual
By Joyce Winslow (jwins@oregon.uoregon.edu)
The University of Oregon home page is going international!
If you've visited the UO on the web lately, you may have noticed links to new foreign language versions at the foot of the page. The foreign language pages are updated daily and have the same news stories and pictures as the English page.
Multilingual web pages are an emerging trend. A few other universities, particularly those abroad, have also begun offering multilingual translations of some key links from their home pages. Eventually, we expect to see an increasing internationalism on the web.
The Computing Center took on this translation project with the intent to make the UO home page more universally welcoming, and to provide a "template" for campus departments that may wish to follow our example in their web pages. (Note that we are not attempting to translate all our pages, just those that may be of particular interest to foreign visitors.)
Versions in German, Spanish, French, and Italian are online now, and more continue to be added. Computing Center web specialist Dave Ragsdale is currently working on a Thai version, and eventually he will create UO home pages in Dutch, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and many other languages, including Nordic and African languages.
As Ragsdale notes, one of the challenges in designing a foreign language page is finding appropriate names for the major links. "Our major links are not necessarily links that get used in other languages, so sometimes it's difficult to find a culturally correct term to use for some of our 'American' links," he explains. Ragsdale must also create replacement graphics and drop them into duplicate pages with the new foreign language text and text alts.
The other major part of this project, of course, is translation, and the Computing Center is soliciting translating help from any and all linguists on campus. Thus far, volunteer translators have included:
Spanish: Hervey Allen (Computing Center)
Italian: Steve Huter (Network Startup Resource Center)
German: Helmut Plant (Germanic Languages and Literature)
Portuguese: Sergio Koreisha (College of Business)
French: Andrew Ehrhardt (Romance Languages)
We thank these volunteers for their time and effort!
If you're fluent in a foreign language and are interested in participating in this project, contact Joe St Sauver (346-1720, joe@oregon.uoregon.edu).