@rorycb, I personally think that a well integrated multilingual funcionality could be an important success factor of a forum platform such as discourse. I consider the Google translator plugin like a work around. It’s easy to use, but it doesn’t deliver all the needed features.
And honestly, would you read or follow a forum like this one (meta.discourse) with no english knowledge, only by using google translator? I guess no.
From my point of view, the biggest challenge is to make users feel comfortable writing posts in their own language and read any posts in other languages through a well integrated translation system. If the forum has a main language and secondary languages (as it is now), users with secondary languages won’t feel totally at home and maybe not motivated to interact with other people. This is just the human side.
A well integrated multilingual platform opens up further applications and allow much more connections with people without having to define a common main language. This last condition is a killer factor in some contexts. Living in Switzerland, with four official national languages, makes me sensitive to this topic.
So, back to your posts. I can imagine to select specific languages to be translated in advance and then stored in a database. As a result, not selected languages would be translated on demand. I find it a great idea.
I wonder if there are other people who have the same point of view and if there is any chance that someone develops such a software?