Travellerspoint in Chinese

Big News! Travellerspoint is now available in Chinese.

http://cn.travellerspoint.com (Simplified)
http://tw.travellerspoint.com (Traditional)

This is not just a translation of one section. The ENTIRE site is in Chinese. It's quite a monumental task and we have member lzl to thank for this. He's been working on making the code work for a multilingual setting for the past year or so and this is the culmination of that effort. He will be in charge of the Chinese version, since we obviously can't moderate easily or respond to questions. The forum is a blank canvas right now, with 1 post, but of course we hope that will start filling up with questions (and answers ) soon enough.

Now, there are some nuances to this system that are well worth explaining, in particular the ability to set your language preferences (available on cn now, soon to be available on www as well). Through your profile, you are able to set up which languages you speak. If you speak Chinese, but also speak English, then you can add that in as a second language. When you do this, content on Travellerspoint in both languages will be shown. The forum will not just be Chinese, it will also have the English forums showing. And when you reply in those forums, they will of course show on the English site as well.

This is also handy for the Travel Helpers system, because it allows you as a travel helper to specify which language people can contact you in. Someone on the Chinese site who doesn't have English set up as a language will not be able to contact an English travel helper. Not that they would be likely to try anyway, because the English speaking travel helpers will not show up on the Chinese site unless you have it set up to say that you speak English of course.

Photos on the Chinese site are still all the same ones shown on the English site - pictures don't need translation after all, even if their titles are in the wrong language.

The guide is an entirely blank canvas, will need plenty of work of course.

If you want to access a page in Traditional Chinese from the Simplified Chinese site, there is a direct link at the top of the navigation on every page to toggle between the two. It will convert all the characters into their Traditional equivalent. Works the other way around too of course.

And so it begins! It's going to be a fun 2009

Travellerspoint 旅游社区

Hmmmm.
In which case, my apologies. I've just flagged it as spam.

In my defence, another forum i'm a member of has had regular recent struggles of late being taken over with Chinese language spammers, and its likely that the forum will close as a result. And with no English note on that page, I had to assume the same here, and would continue to do so (without reading every thread, which is not always possible with these slow speeds)

Congrats for the translation/work, but a note in English somewhere on there (a featured thread, in Chinese, in a new sub forum, from somebody with only 1 post, and with an email address on there? It looks more blatantly like spam than most of the English language spam you get!!) would have helped...

Apologies

Hehe, no problem Rich. The subforum should of course not show at all on the English site, hence the lack of explanation.

Hopefully we don't get overwhelmed with Chinese spammers.

Congratulations for the latest Chinese version of the site.
and please continue the good work as every one deserves Travellerspoint.
it's just like being in a family. Something for every one.

Congrats on the launch!

I noticed the font size is bigger now, which makes it more readable.

By the way, all communication should be on the private messaging system. The new moderator probably overlooked the forum rules which forbid personal information like email in the open forum.

Looking at the spams we've got that originated from China, all I can say is, good luck moderating, Li!

Wow, a massive operation indeed. Kudos for doing up everything in Chinese. I just had a quick look and it seems great. Would be interesting to see someone start a thread in Chinese too.

Small change, although this affects more than just Chinese speakers; the option to set your language(s) is now available in your profile on here as well.

This achieves a couple of things immediately.

1. If Chinese is one of your languages, it will show the Chinese forums right alongside all the English ones right here on www.travellerspoint.com. So if you speak Chinese, but prefer to have the site with its English labels, then you can have both.
2. On the main blogs page, you will see entries in all languages you speak show up in the Recent Entries section. When people start blogs, they specify the language (locale actually) they want to use. By default, on Travellerspoint we only show the English ones in the Recent Entries list, because these are generally the only ones relevant to most people. But if you speak other languages, sometimes you might be interested in more. I've added Dutch as a secondary language in my profile, so now I can see all the Dutch entries coming up as well.

In addition to those things, there are a few things that it will do soon that aren't available yet. In particular, it will show your languages on your profile page and also it will have an affect on the Travel Helper feature.