Multi-Lingual Blogging Requires Language Selections

Occasionally, we see requests from folks who want to publish a blog in non English languages, and don't trust the Google Translator, or translated blogs using a Translator Gadget.

Every different world language has its own peculiarities - character set, font, grammatical constructions, even direction of type will differ from language to language. To support these peculiarities, Blogger has a language selection, for each language which they support. This roughly parallels the ongoing development of the Google Translator.

Use the Language selector for your blog, at Settings - "Language and formatting", and look at the Language pull-down list.

Select your own language, before you publish in the blog.

When you publish a non English blog, find and select the language of your interest, before you publish posts. This may present a challenge, to those who want to produce a blog in more than one language, simultaneously. Any blog can have one and only one language selection.

If you publish multiple blogs, merge them in a cluster.

If you want to publish in, say, English and French, you'll need two blogs - an English blog and a French blog, each in the right language selection. To publish in English, French and German, you'll need three blogs - an English blog, a French blog, and a German blog, each in the right language selection.

Having setup an cluster or set of blogs, combine and merge them into a cohesive set, so it all looks like one blog, to your readers. And use "hreflang" to aggregate the cluster, to the search engines.

A solid naming convention helps enable future expansion.

If I want to publish The Real Blogger Status in English, French, and German, I could have "de-blogging-nitecruzr.blogspot.com", "en-blogging-nitecruzr.blogspot.com", and "fr-blogging-nitecruzr.blogspot.com", each blog with its proper language selection. Since I publish in my own domain, "Nitecruzr.Net", I would have "de.blogging.nitecruzr.net", "en.blogging.nitecruzr.net", and "fr.blogging.nitecruzr.net".

I use the ISO 2 character Language Codes for all my multi-lingual blog names.