Structuring a multilingual community

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:bookmark: This guide explains different approaches to organizing a Discourse forum for a multilingual community, including pros and cons of each method.

:person_raising_hand: Required user level: Administrator

Discourse offers several ways to structure your site for a multilingual community. This guide will explore the most common approaches and their advantages and disadvantages.

Using categories for language separation

ā€œOther languagesā€ category with sub-categories

One approach is to create a main category called ā€œOther Languagesā€ with sub-categories for specific languages.

How to implement:

  1. Create a new category called ā€œOther Languagesā€
  2. Add sub-categories for each language you want to support
  3. Encourage users to post in the appropriate language sub-category

Pros:

  • Clean separation between languages
  • Ability to use category-restricted tags for additional organization within each language

Cons:

  • Multilingual users need to track multiple categories with similar content
  • Can lead to content silos based on language

Separate top-level categories for each language

Another approach is to create separate top-level categories for each supported language.

How to implement:

  1. Create a new category for each language you want to support
  2. Use a theme component like Custom Header Links to add language switching links in the header

Pros:

  • Clear distinction between language sections
  • Easy navigation for users who speak only one language

Cons:

  • Can create a fragmented community experience
  • Difficult for multilingual users to follow discussions across languages
    • Can lead to content silos based on language

Using tags for language identification

Forum-wide language tags

This approach involves creating tags for each supported language and encouraging users to tag their posts accordingly.

How to implement:

  1. Create tags for each language you want to support (e.g., #english, #french, #spanish)
  2. Encourage users to add the appropriate language tag when creating topics
  3. Optionally, use emojis in tag names for visual distinction

Pros:

  • No need for separate categories
  • Multilingual users can easily follow all content
  • Flexible for topics that may involve multiple languages

Cons:

  • Relies on user compliance for accurate tagging
  • May be less intuitive for users accustomed to category-based navigation

Using separate Discourse instances

For communities with distinct language groups, using separate Discourse instances for each language can be considered.

How to implement:

  1. Set up a separate Discourse instance for each language
  2. Use subdomains or separate domains for each instance (e.g., en.example.com, fr.example.com)
  3. Link between instances in the header or footer using a theme component like Custom Header Links

Pros:

  • Complete separation of content and users by language
  • Ability to customize each instance for its specific language community

Cons:

  • More complex to manage multiple instances
  • Difficult for multilingual users to participate across language communities
  • Potential for duplicate discussions and fragmented community

Additional considerations

Localization of categories and tags

Consider localizing category names, tag names, and their descriptions for a more inclusive experience.

User language preferences

Utilize Discourseā€™s built-in locale settings and allow users to set their preferred language for the interface and content.

Search functionality

Ensure that users can search across all languages or filter results by specific languages.

Additional resources

Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-26T00:58:46Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-26T00:58:56Z

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I think https://community.wd.com have quite an elegant version of the ā€œother languagesā€ category. They use several such categories for different languages and added a language bar above the header (via css I suppose, but they forgot to add it to the mobile css).

They even managed to somehow exclude the language categories from the ā€œall categoriesā€ page (also via CSS?) And also the ā€œlatestā€ page seems free of non-english topics, but that may be because there are non at the moment.

However, another downside of this solution is clearly that the illusion of beeing on, for example, a German WD forum is shattered when you click on ā€œlatestā€ because what you get are not the latest German posts.

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Is there anybody who uses completely separate instances of Discourse for multi-lingual communities? This seemed like the most obvious way to do it (especially since you can set each language-subcommunity to default to use the same language in the Discourse UI).

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Iā€™m setting them up, but I do:

https://en.ancap.ch
https://br.ancap.ch
https://jp.ancap.ch
https://th.ancap.ch

and so onā€¦ they are in a multisite configuration

I prefer that each one has a link to each others in the Header (the https://br.ancap.ch one has)

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I like your approach. How you did it?

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Thereā€™s nothing special to @swfsqlā€™s approach.

  1. Set up a dedicated Discourse forum for each language. No need for a multisite configuration.
  2. Use a theme component like Custom Header Links or Brand header theme component to create the menu you need.
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I would like to share some ideas about how to turn Discourse in a truly and multilingual space, equitable to speakers of dozens of languages, some of them multilingual, some of them not, some fluent in English some of them not, or not at all. In our organization we might be able to invest in the development of these features, after a good technical and community review.

The idea would be to use language tags with some customization. Posters would be able to tag their post with the relevant language so as to keep topics searchable by language.

Goal

The goal is to offer a discussion space that speakers of any language (and language combinations) can feel as theirs, as opposed to an English forum with a multilingual corner or a forum split in many languages becoming effectively many separate forums.

Language tags

For this, the main building block would be a tag specific to languages. This tag would be required for all topics, and it would default to English. Topics in non-English languages would be tagged accordingly.

Languages displayed

By default, the topic would display topics in all languages. Admins could configure as default just one language, a combination of languages, keep all languagesā€¦

Through a language bar that pulls from the tag titles, users could see the topics available in a specific language.

Language user preferences

Through browser detection, language chosen by the user during registration, user preferences, and other means to be determined, the system would decide which language(s) are displayed to a user.

Again, the default would be English and admins could define other combinations. The user could always go to their user preferences and set the language(s) they want to see / ignore. It would be of further use if the users could set the default language of posting, to save them from selecting a language tag each time.

Localization of categories and tags

Tags, categories and their descriptions could be localized.

Search filter

Users could search in all languages or filter for their languages defined in their profiles.

Progressive implementation

Not all these features would be deployed at once, and maybe not all these features need to be in just one plugin. It would be preferred to test and build incrementally, and start with a minimum viable product that a multilingual community could start testing.

Does this approach sound like the right one? Are there other ideas for how we could more effectively build the multilingual element of this discussion space?

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What is it that makes a community feel like a community? In a largely text-based medium, being able to understand the text-based communication of the other members seems key, i.e. I wonder whether itā€™s possible to completely overcome the two pitfalls you mention (ā€˜siloisationā€™ or ā€˜tokenismā€™) in a largely text-based medium (without perfect auto-translation).

One community that comes to mind here is https://discourse.mozilla.org

Currently we have the option of requiring a certain number of tags on a post in a category, see The option to enforce tagging (Category setting ā€œMinimum number of tags required in a topicā€).

However, this use case would benefit from a slightly different setting ā€œRequire tag from a tag groupā€. The way you would use this would be to

  • Create a tag_group with a set list of languages
  • Require each new topic to have one tag added from this group before it is posted.

@HAWK Iā€™m curious if some of the other use cases for this type of setting you mentioned in the linked topic would benefit from something similar (or if they are entirely covered by the existing ā€œMinimum number of tags required in a topicā€ setting)?

This could be done in a fashion that could be generally useful: A tag navigation component that displays tags from a specific group.

Discourse currently allows the user to set their locale (toggled by the allow user locale site setting) and does auto-detection of locale, toggled by the site setting set locale from accept language header. There are three auto-detection contexts:

  • Guests (browser and headers)
  • Signups (ibid)
  • Invites (ibid) - there is perhaps an issue with this? (see) (@schungx?)

Perhaps the two improvements that could be made here would be to:

  • add a setting to allow a user to manually set their locale in the signup form
  • add a ā€˜locale switcherā€™ for guests, similar to facebookā€™s (see bottom bar of signup page). Iā€™ve actually made this for different project, but havenā€™t yet turned it into a plugin.

I find this one really interesting, and think it would definitely be interesting to try. The tags, categories and category descriptions are what a user often reads first before reading an actual topic. These often contribute to the userā€™s sense of the community. If they see words and descriptions that they relate to, theyā€™re more likely to relate to the community itself. So even if thereā€™s a different language once the user gets into the topic, their interest and sense for the community is already primed.

It is also easier to localize category descriptions and tags than it is to localize entire topics. Technically speaking, this is doable, but hasnā€™t yet been tried. See further. @erlend_sh Do you know of any further work on / examples of this?

If the language tags are all in a single tag_group, the move here would be to add a tag-group-specific tag filter to the advanced search page.

To summarise the changes Iā€™ve mentioned above:

  • A ā€œRequire tag from a tag groupā€ site or category setting
  • A tag navigation component that displays tags from a specific group
  • A setting to allow a user to manually set their locale in the signup form
  • A ā€˜locale switcherā€™ for guests
  • Localisation of tags, category names and category descriptions
  • Add a tag-group-specific tag filter to the advanced search page
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Invites (ibid) - there is perhaps an issue with this? (see 1) (@schungx?)

As far as I can tell invite emails will be sent in the site default language, but the user will get his/her locale once signing in.

There is currently no way to specify the language of invitesā€¦

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Nothing springs to mind but weā€™re seeing more and more multilingual communities so if that is going to simplify that particular use case then I think itā€™s a legit ask.

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@HAWK I also support this feature. I can see so many uses for this in addition to requiring language tags. For example, we currently have a tag group called project management with tags #idea, #scoping, #ready, #in-progress, #celebrating, #evaluating, #done. It would be incredible to require people to correctly tag every post they make with the appropriate project management stage within certain categories.

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@neil what are your thoughts? How much work would be involved in enforcing one tag from a specific tag group be?

Note that we havenā€™t hit the rule of three yet, but Iā€™m still interested in answers to the above.

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This would sound interesting for my forum also. We mostly have English-speaking members, but also Spanish-speaking members. Weā€™re always translating back and forth. The thought of two separate forums (different languages) is not the way to go for us. But an auto-translated bi-lingual site - user-specified default language - would be great!

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It would be easy to add a way to enforce having a tag from a tag group. I guess in this case (choose one language) we want to enforce exactly one tag, but Iā€™m guessing some people might want at least one tag (similar to the ā€œMinimum number of tags required in a topicā€ setting). Iā€™d rather implement ā€œat least one tag from a specific tag groupā€ since we can kind of see this in action already at Car Talk where itā€™s possible for people to tag their topics with all the car make and model tags, but it doesnā€™t happen. Also in a multilingual community, more than one language can make sense sometimes.

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Yup, that sounds smart to me.

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Perhaps the way to do this would be to add it as a numerical minimum, rather than a boolean, to give more granualar control, and also leave the door open to adding a maximum?

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I built this today. Itā€™s a per-category setting in the Tags tab:

2019-10-31_16-57
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Something that can be improved is how people know what tags they have to choose from. Right now itā€™s showing the tag group name, but it should probably list the tags, or the most popular tags in the group in the case that there are too many to list.

2019-10-31_16-58
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@debryc @angus Thoughts?

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This is so exciting, Neil!

  1. I think the settings display is perfect.
  2. I agree that there needs to be some indication of what tags they have to choose from.

Perhaps in the tags dropdown of the composer, display the tag group and its tag options first, before displaying other popular tags.

Or, perhaps the error message includes a ā€œchoose one of the following tags before postingā€ message. Users could click on the tag name to add it!

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I went with this approach. The required tags will be suggested by the tag input if one hasnā€™t been chosen yet.

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Another thought:
To be equitable to multiple languages, a user must be able to produce/express (source text) in the language most comfortable to him/her. And the reader must be able to consume/read in the language most comfortable to him/her (translated text). To minimize lost-in-translation issues, it would be beneficial to show side-by-side both the source text and the translated text. The base version of the translated text could be an auto-translated version. And subsequent versions of translated text could be user-contributed improvements. Just like a wiki, readers could choose to see earlier versions of translated text if they suspect lost-in-translation issues.

User must have a quick way to choose the consumed language (to over-ride any decisions made by the system or admin) - say from a language drop-down from top-right corner of screen. For e.g., an English speaking guest-user (not logged in) traveling to China might want to see text in English though browser-detection may indicate Chinese as local language.

Love this idea of translating tags and categories. Although, some technical/scientific terms may not have translations and may need to remain in source language.

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