Language barrier?

#1

Someone in another venue was complaining how hard it was to set up their target language at tiddlywiki.com.

I had never tried it before, so went through the steps. I have to say, it wasn’t intuitive. I don’t know how it compares to other products since I nearly always have the choice to use English.

I’m wondering if the language barrier slows down uptake of TiddlyWiki? I can’t think of any solution other than having 30+ versions of TiddlyWiki pre-compiled, which would be a lot of overhead. Though maybe it could be automated.

#2

I think the workflow to start a new empty wiki can be simplified.

We can use something similar to the full-edition which contains all possible languages.

  • Open the all-language edition
  • Let the user select the language
  • Enable a save-button, next to the language selector
  • Done

A second workflow could be:

  • Open the all-language edition
  • User selects the language
  • Offer a drag & drop link, that can be used to install the language in your own wiki

Would that make it easier?

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#3

I think the concern was that accessing a different language on tiddlywiki.com itself was a problem. I was able to do it mainly because I knew to type “language” into the search box and follow the instructions, which were similar to other steps I’ve done before, but would be confusing to someone new.

Maybe the “full” edition – which I didn’t know existed – should be listed at the top?

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#4

Okay, how am I only finding out about the “full” version now? How long has that been around?

#5

The info about custom editions has been at: https://tiddlywiki.com/#Editions created 8. Sept. 2014
So basically for ever. But the “full edition” is only there for testing. As it is, it does not have much value.

But as I wrote, it could be a basis to create “language specific” instructions and empty editions.

#6

The first time I uses tiddlywiki, I wasn’t aware that tiddlywiki supports multiple languages, and I once saw a Chinese user of tiddlywiki uses English version of tiddlywiki.

To inform new users about the language support of tiddlywiki, we may use $:/info/browser/language to detect user’s language, and display a localized message like “You can download the Simplified Chinese empty edition in (url)”, “You can install the Polish language plugin in Control Panel → Plugins → Get more plugins”.

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#7

Ha! That’s funny, Dave. Everyone and their dog knows this. I’m just kidding. Full edition. Who knew?

#8

Hi @XLBilly that’s a good idea. Were you thinking it would be implemented at the level of tiddlywiki.com, or would it be included in the core, and thus in empty.html?

#9

Jeremy, could I just add a little caution… I’m not disagreeing with the idea of the automatic language identification through the browser. There may be user experiences of foreign languages that come into play, however.

For me, my browser settings are Japanese and it doesn’t cause problems. The news sites that come up upon opening are Japanese. Not a big deal.

But when I go to YouTube. That’s when things go berserk. I’ll get made for Japanese searches. That’s fair enough. But when I click on the English language ones, they’re automatically simultaneously interpreted into Japanese. I can correct it by going up into the settings.

I think what is uncomfortable is that I am assumed to be this and that. I have to find settings to reverse the presumptions. If that makes sense.

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#10

But it’s just offering people a chance to switch-up. Which is pretty reasonable in 90% of cases. And I assume there would be a way to turn it off for your own TiddlyWiki files.

The thing is, to be effective, wouldn’t the how-to message needed to be translated into all the languages that TW handles?

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#11

Ouch, good point.

Also, I wonder if visitors might think that they will be able to read the content in their own language, rather than just being able to translate the user interface.

#12

I think browsers already do a good job, to “live translate” content of almost any language. – Including the UI.

As I wrote, we can open a “full language edition” and let the users choose. This way we do not need to put 30 translations into tw-com.

We will need to translate the “Info / selection tiddler” into all existing languages. But IMO even without real translators, AI seems to do a good job already.

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#13

LLM translation attempts are highly variable, depending upon language relations! Between European languages LLMs may do decently well… Japanese–English automatic translation is still very fragile and often needs to be squinted at very imaginatively in order to guess what the real meaning might have been. The risk of gaps being filled with hallucinations is still very high.

I would suggest having very clear flag icons along some edge to draw attention to international- and language-options. It’s true that flags are imperfect — and politically charged! — representations for language. But flags — or perhaps just putting a globe icon in the sidebar’s page menu area? — would be our best chance to help a non-English-reading visitor see, pretty quickly, that TiddlyWiki may have a path forward for them.

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#14

I’ve created a PR that displays a message under the download button if user’s browser’s language isn’t en-GB and the language is supported. Ideally, all the messages should be localized (currently only Chinese is localized).

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#15

A great initiative, but is it necessary? Is it a priority for TW uptake? I’m just asking. I’m NOT disagreeing. And when dealing with languages and regions, sometimes presumptions can be a little more than just off-putting. I mean, when I get browser settings set to American English… I’ve had to replace a lot of screens. Just kidding! But for some in this world, the automated settings might indicate that they’re being “watched”?
Let’s not underestimate new users’ ability to, from wherever they may come and whatever language they speak, adopt (split infinitive made intentional) the idea of TW and understand the documentation that will lead them to where we are now.

#16

It’s up to users to decide whether they want websites to know their language preference. If they don’t, they can change the default setting or switch to privacy-oriented browsers like Librewolf (which always set the language preference to en-US regardless of the system locale by default).

The problem of “language barrier” comes from various aspects, like the “Language” section is not visible enough and its documention doesn’t mention all the languages it supports, so there may exists better solution. Though auto language detection may not be ideal for people with concern for privacy, in my view it is a compromise that provides guides about installing languages for native speakers while not being as “offensive” as Youtube does.

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#17

Flags have been completely removed from the core - (under my protest). The language selector icon now is: image

A language switcher at the tw-com sidebar would indicate, that users can switch between different languages for the content. That’s not the case. We only can switch the UI language.

So there has to be a clear distinction between content and UI.

There may be a possibility at the GettingStarted tiddler, which contains the big download button. → We could add a language selector there.

An other problem with UI translations is, that only a view languages are 100% translated. Most of them lack a significant portion of translated texts. So the UI falls back to the default language.

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#18

We’ve now identified several potential issues with the original proposal:

  • Browser language settings do not always reflect the language preference of the user
  • Ambiguity over whether the content would be translated, or just the user interface
  • The incompleteness of many of the core translations and the translations of tiddlywiki.com content

Perhaps the fundamental goal is to ensure that non-English speaking visitors can easily find the material and settings that are useful to them. We’ve already tried to address that issue for Chinese speaking visitors by adding a badge in their native language directing them to the resources available for them:

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We could add similar native language badges for maybe 5 or 6 languages that do have a good level of support, with each linking to a tiddler like “中文社区 - Chinese Community”.

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#19

As a regular contributor to the tiddlywiki comunity I would like to see some documentation and possibly support such that when making a package or plugin I can provide sufficent functionality someone could add there own language specific implementation.

As I do not speak a second language fluently I dont have the opportunity to do this and research how to language enable my solutions. So Although I love and respect the diversity of languages I cant do much to help with my own output, even if I dont release such solutions in different languages I wonder how I could support anyone who wanted to translate it.

#20

Language pack are not JS plugin, can we use a startup tiddler to auto install them based on detected language?

And there are issue to make all docs a plugin, with localization. So even docs can be auto installed. Then there is no need for separated editions.

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