I cam across an interesting discussion on multilingual blogging via this BloggingPro post. The question is: what’s the best way to do it?
I’ve thought about it more than once. I’ve even had to make this decision more than once. You see, my native language is Russian. My written Russian is horrible, but I still prefer it in certain situations. My English, I hear, is almost good. And being from Computer Science background, I prefer English for all my technical communications. English language is the father of all technical terms. Or at least those that I care about. There’s also another benefit to English for me – for the last ten years I’ve lived in Cyprus. English is like an official language here – everyone speak it. Oh, and one day I hope I’ll learn enough Greek to use it for blogging too.
So, what’s the best way to go about it? Everyone decides for themselve.
I personally leaned for separation. For this blog I use English only. As I do for some other blogs. And for some other blogs I use Russian, but exclusively as well. Usually, I blog about different things in different languages. But at those times that I use different languages to talk about the same thing, I still write it differently. It’s not a translation. It’s a totally other story. Because language is not the only thing which is different between people. The whole cultural part is. Russian-speaking people communicate differently from English-speaking people. As do Spanish-speaking people. And French-speaking people. And multilingual people. And everyone else…
So, I say – if you have to go with two or more languages for you company’s blog or just because you want to – separate them. Have a blog for each language. You’ll have more freedom this way. And your audience will be less fragmented. And more focused. And that’s what we all want, isn’t it?