构建多语言社区

:bookmark: 本指南介绍了为多语言社区组织 Discourse 论坛的不同方法,包括每种方法的优缺点。

:person_raising_hand: 所需用户等级:管理员

Discourse 提供了多种方式来为您的多语言社区构建站点结构。本指南将探讨最常见的几种方法及其优缺点。

:spiral_notepad: 由于我们现在推荐使用 Discourse 核心内置的 内容本地化 功能(可选通过 Discourse AI 插件实现自动 AI 翻译),本主题已不再作为多语言社区结构推荐方法的来源。更多详细信息,请参阅 Content Localization - Manual and Automatic with Discourse AI

使用分类进行语言分离

“其他语言”分类及其子分类

一种方法是创建一个名为“其他语言”的主分类,并为特定语言创建子分类。

实施步骤:

  1. 创建一个名为“其他语言”的新分类
  2. 为每种您希望支持的语言添加子分类
  3. 鼓励用户在相应的语言子分类中发帖

优点:

  • 语言之间界限清晰
  • 可在每个语言内部使用分类限制标签进行进一步组织

缺点:

  • 多语言用户需要跟踪多个包含相似内容的分类
  • 可能导致按语言划分的内容孤岛

为每种语言设立独立的顶级分类

另一种方法是为每种支持的语言创建独立的顶级分类。

实施步骤:

  1. 为每种您希望支持的语言创建一个新分类
  2. 使用如 自定义头部链接 这样的主题组件,在头部添加语言切换链接

优点:

  • 语言板块区分明确
  • 对于只说一种语言的用户而言导航便捷

缺点:

  • 可能导致社区体验碎片化
  • 多语言用户难以跨语言跟踪讨论
  • 可能导致按语言划分的内容孤岛

使用标签进行语言标识

全站语言标签

这种方法涉及为每种支持的语言创建标签,并鼓励用户相应地为其帖子添加标签。

实施步骤:

  1. 为每种您希望支持的语言创建标签(例如 #english、#french、#spanish
  2. 鼓励用户在创建主题时添加相应的语言标签
  3. (可选)在标签名称中使用表情符号以实现视觉区分

优点:

  • 无需创建独立的分类
  • 多语言用户可以轻松关注所有内容
  • 对于可能涉及多种语言的主题具有灵活性

缺点:

  • 依赖用户遵守规则以确保标签准确
  • 对于习惯基于分类导航的用户来说可能不够直观

使用独立的 Discourse 实例

对于具有明显语言群体划分的社区,可以考虑为每种语言使用独立的 Discourse 实例。

实施步骤:

  1. 为每种语言设置一个独立的 Discourse 实例
  2. 为每个实例使用子域名或独立域名(例如 en.example.comfr.example.com
  3. 使用如 自定义头部链接 这样的主题组件,在头部或页脚建立实例间的链接

优点:

  • 按语言完全分离内容和用户
  • 可为每个实例针对其特定语言社区进行定制

缺点:

  • 管理多个实例更为复杂
  • 多语言用户难以跨语言社区参与
  • 可能导致讨论重复和社区碎片化

其他考虑因素

分类和标签的本地化

Discourse 现在支持通过内置的内容本地化功能对分类名称、分类描述和标签名称进行本地化。请在站点设置中启用“启用内容本地化”并配置“支持的内容本地化语言”。授权组可提供手动翻译,或通过 Discourse AI 插件配置自动翻译。

用户语言偏好

Discourse 内置了多种语言设置,包括“允许用户设置语言”、“根据 Accept-Language 请求头设置语言”、“根据 Cookie 设置语言”以及“根据参数设置语言”。这些设置允许用户设置其首选界面语言。启用内容本地化后,用户将根据其语言偏好自动查看本地化内容。

语言切换器

“内容本地化语言切换器”设置可在头部显示语言切换器,允许访客(包括匿名用户)在您支持的语言之间切换。

搜索功能

确保用户能够跨所有语言进行搜索,或按特定语言筛选结果。

其他资源

20 个赞

I think https://community.wd.com have quite an elegant version of the “other languages” 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 “all categories” page (also via CSS?) And also the “latest” 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 “latest” because what you get are not the latest German posts.

8 个赞

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).

2 个赞

I’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 on… 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)

6 个赞

I like your approach. How you did it?

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There’s nothing special to @swfsql’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.
6 个赞

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 languages…

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?

9 个赞

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 it’s possible to completely overcome the two pitfalls you mention (‘siloisation’ or ‘tokenism’) 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 “Minimum number of tags required in a topic”).

However, this use case would benefit from a slightly different setting “Require tag from a tag group”. 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 I’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 “Minimum number of tags required in a topic” 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 ‘locale switcher’ for guests, similar to facebook’s (see bottom bar of signup page). I’ve actually made this for different project, but haven’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 user’s sense of the community. If they see words and descriptions that they relate to, they’re more likely to relate to the community itself. So even if there’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 hasn’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 I’ve mentioned above:

  • A “Require tag from a tag group” 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 ‘locale switcher’ for guests
  • Localisation of tags, category names and category descriptions
  • Add a tag-group-specific tag filter to the advanced search page
10 个赞

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 invites…

2 个赞

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

8 个赞

@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.

3 个赞

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

Note that we haven’t hit the rule of three yet, but I’m still interested in answers to the above.

7 个赞

This would sound interesting for my forum also. We mostly have English-speaking members, but also Spanish-speaking members. We’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!

4 个赞

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 I’m guessing some people might want at least one tag (similar to the “Minimum number of tags required in a topic” setting). I’d rather implement “at least one tag from a specific tag group” since we can kind of see this in action already at Car Talk where it’s possible for people to tag their topics with all the car make and model tags, but it doesn’t happen. Also in a multilingual community, more than one language can make sense sometimes.

13 个赞

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?

4 个赞

I built this today. It’s a per-category setting in the Tags tab:

Something that can be improved is how people know what tags they have to choose from. Right now it’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.

@debryc @angus Thoughts?

11 个赞

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 “choose one of the following tags before posting” message. Users could click on the tag name to add it!

5 个赞

I went with this approach. The required tags will be suggested by the tag input if one hasn’t been chosen yet.

6 个赞

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.

3 个赞