Cyprus-Forum.com

[tlc]

Hi!

I am doing a small information website for a Cyprus topic and my target audience are Greek Cypriots but also Foreigners that live in Cyprus and maybe tourists that will visit.

So I will use both Greek and English content on the website and I want to find out how to best combine the two.

Because its a small website I can't afford to have 2 versions of everything. Some articles will be in Greek and some will be English and the interface, menu and that sort of things, will have to be one language or the other.

My first question is if mixing the content will be a turn off for you. If you see that the website is not 100% English or 100% Greek will that be something negative and will make you not to use the website even if you can find some unique useful content there?

The second question is only for Greek speakers. I know that the ones that visit this forum are good English speakers but please imagine you are the average Greek Cypriot

Would you mind if the interface is only in English? Like the menus in this forum for example that says "Profile","Search", "About" and the Search form that says "Search for Keywords", "Category" etc would you mind if these things are only in English?

And another unrelated question for Greek speakers is if you know a Greek Cypriot forum in Greek language that the participants are adults. The only ones I know are for teens and some other I found are almost dead If you know please send the link to me with a PM! THANKS!!

[miltiades]

Visit any restaurant in Cyprus and you will see that the Menu is both in Greek and English.I see no problem with !mixing " the two languages. Those that might consider it a turn off wont be likely to visiting any site , might not even have a computer! Go ahead mate , bearing in mind that Greek and English is like cheese on toast !!

[juliesewell]

Hey, they can always use a translator tool, such as AltaVista Babelfish which will allow them to translate a whole webpage!

http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr

I believe you can download the tool and put it on your own website......

Google do something similar but don't think they translate from Greek yet.

[tlc]

Thank you Anybody else that can answer the questions? It will be a great help.

[phoenix]

Thank you Anybody else that can answer the questions? It will be a great help.

I mistrust everything I read on the Internet . . . so if there was a site that only offered me SOME of the information in a language I understood, whilst withholding other information in an inaccessible language, then I would quickly move on.

Hope that helps your decision making . . .

[tlc]

Thank you phoenix.

Would you do that even if you needed the information and you couldn't find it anywhere else online?

[phoenix]

Thank you phoenix.

Would you do that even if you needed the information and you couldn't find it anywhere else online?

If I was not instantly put off by the site being obviously targeted to speakers of two different languages, with prior-assumptions that each needed different amounts / type of information . . . then I would hang around long enough to gather necessary information.

So long as I did not need to part with personal information nor monetary details, then YES I would look into addresses or tips about attractions to visit etc.

Maybe don't make it unnecessarily obvious that you are providing different types of details for the two languages, otherwise you will raise suspicions (but I am above average in cynicism / wariness / mistrust of strangers . . . so take this as an extreme case scenario).

[tlc]

Thank you. I now understood what you mean.

I will not be making the choice about what is written in what language. Think of it as news articles by journalists some of them will write in Greek and some in English.

[Tim Drayton]

I think the most logical step would be to have separate pages for each language. This is common practice in designing web sites. At the top you will probably have flags and the words "Click here for ...". This will take you into the parallel site for that particular language. Everything here will be in one language, i.e. Greek or English, and there is no need for the content to be identical. If you are only going to put up something in Greek, then it only goes on the Greek language pages and not on the English-language pages, and vice versa. I examine a lot of mulitlingual web sites in my work, and I can assure you that it is quite common to find content in one language that is not present in another.

[tlc]

Thank you Tim

I think many Cypriots are bi-lingual in Greek and English like you. For you wouldn't it be easier if you could select a date and a topic and see all related articles in both languages instead of having to do this for each language separately?

And I am not sure if people assume that content that exists in one language will not exist in another. I think that most of them will believe that the English version would be an exact translation of the Greek version.

Would you say that for you it would be a turn off if articles from both languages where together? Would you not visit the page because of this? Would the website feel messy because of this?