Tech Tuesday - Going International

This week I'm going to talk about the non-English speaking parts of the world. Do you have any foreign readers? For example, this blog as seen visitors from 67 countries since beginning in August 2008. The top 10 languages being English, Portuguese, Italian, French, Czech, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, and Turkish. Among the most pages viewed per visit, then top languages are (surprisingly), Norwegian, Korean, Danish, Portuguese, Turkish, French, Japanese, and Finnish. English makes it's appearance down at #20.

Or maybe there's a blog that you want to read that's written in French? I'll show you how to do that also.

It didn't occur to me right away that people in other countries might find this blog worth it to read. I didn't even know how many English speaker would. But soon after starting out, I began to see an occasional visitor from a far off country. I began to wonder if they knew English, or were translating me somehow. I thought that if they were finding my blog, the least I could do was make it easier for them to read.  Maybe you've noticed I have a Google Translate button prominently at the top of the right column. This will translate all the text on the page into whatever language you'd like to see it in. Go ahead, play with it for a minute, I'll wait....

Pretty cool, right?
To add a Google Translate widget to your blog, go to your Blogger [Layout] tab, and click on Add Gadget.
Select the HTML/JavaScript gadget. Then paste this script into the code section:

Then click [Save] and you're all set. 

Now anyone who doesn't speak English (or actually whatever language you write your blog in) can translate your blog when they land on it.

So what if there's a really cool pottery blog in French that you'd like to read?  Well, if you're using Google Reader, it's a snap. (If you're not, see my post on using Google Reader here) Remember in that previous Tech Tuesday how I showed you how to subscribe to blogs? Just a simple extra step will have you reading foreign blogs.

With the feed selected, go to the [Feed Settings] button, and just click on [Translate to my language]

and, as the French say, Voila'

English!

One big way I find other pottery blogs is by checking out the blogrolls of blogs I already read. So once you find a few non-English blogs, a whole other world opens up. The world of pottery (and other) blogs just got a lot bigger!

And for everyone in other countries reading in your native language, welcome! and thank you for reading! If you have or know of a pottery blog in your language, I'd love to hear about it.