Anyone who knows about adding languages to our sites.

[1simone]

Hello, can someone tell me how its done when you want to attract viewers from other languages? For instance if you have a site in English, is there a way someone from say france can easily view the pages? Is the something can be put into the headers to attract different languaged viewers? I am shooting in the dark, I have never checked on this before so don't know how its done. Please get back to me, thank you very much.

[Quadrille]

Not quite clear what you are asking; if you don't wish to publish translations, what would be the point of attracting visitors who cannot read the page?

Plus many people choose to search in their own language only, which would count your site out.

If you, say, had a UK site in English, the best way to get French visitors would be to translate into French, and publish on the .fr domain name with a host based in France. You could live with EITHER .fr OR a host in France - but you'd need one or the other to have a chance.

And I suspect few French people would spend much time at an English language site, unless they had no French option.

And even fewer English would spend time at a French site!

[1simone]

I was afraid you were going to say that. So there aren't any browsers yet that you can select whatever language you want to read web pages with? If not, that may be the browser of the next century!

[Quadrille]

Or later this one!

No. Many have links to translations - but the quality of translation is exactly what you'd expect from a machine. And again, no-one uses them unless they cannot find a page in their own language.

I've used translation services to buy rare books in German (I speak no German), and the translations were highly amusing, as the syntax is so different, but no good at all. Luckily the dealer wrote perfect English, and forgave me for my appalling translations. But you cannot depend on that, alas :)

[1simone]

Well thanks for the very good advice and logic behind it, at least I know how not to move forward. Thanks!

[ronin]

And I suspect few French people would spend much time at an English language site.

It really depends on the demographic. I know plenty of French people who can and do refer to English language websites. If the people we are talking about are under 35 and reasonably cosmopolitan they are certainly likely to know enough English to read it, even if they don't go around speaking it in public.

If more native English-speaking people actually made the effort to speak some foreign languages, then they would realise that using other people's languages - reading, least of all - is no big deal.

(That said, I guess it helps if the languages are written in some kind of alphabet... you can't really guess kanji).

Translation by a native speaker is always the best solution, but the second best option is clear English which uses no slang or figures of speech (and limits frequency of phrasal verbs, if possible).

[londrum]

all of what has been said above is definitely true, but it also depends on what kind of site you have. foreign visitors will quite happily visit your site if it's an official one, or one of a kind.

if i was going to france, for example, and wanted to stay in the "Le Rubbish Hotel", then i would definitely have a look around their website, even if i only had a few words of french.