Building a website/forum/blog in your native language

[Migi]

Inspired by other discussion related to language in a forum, I find another question.

Members of Forum Promotion come from various countries, but when they come here they are promotion websites/forums/blogs in English. Half of it is because Forum Promotion does not facilitate advertisements for non-English communities, but that's another thing. There are many members from countries who have other native languages but English (including me) who are trying to build English communities. I wonder why. Wouldn't it be easier to start a forum in your own native language? It's probably going to be easier to write content and find members since everyone will come from generally similar background.

What do you think? 🙂

 

[Elenitsa]

Join the club of not native English speakers! English speakers (be they native or as a foreign language) are a much wider pool to gather members from, this is the reason. And there are more resources for them too.

If I build it in my mother tongue, nobody would have joined.

 

[Tindris]

I believe one of the issues, as Elenitsa mentions, is the amount of possible members. It is harder to promote and reach a native audience, whereas it is a lot easier to reach a wider audience if the site is in English.

I myself have recently reached this dilemma while working on a personal project. My native language is English, but I have for the last 9 years lived in a country where English is not. This means I am bilingual, so the question is, when I launch my site, how can I cater for both audiences? While delving into this matter I have found that nowadays, it isn't difficult. There are fantastic translation modifications available, especially for blogs.

This question still poses an obvious point, with English not being someones native language, does this affect the quality of the site. Can it be off-putting for possible members? My honest answer, I don't know. But I imagine it will have an effect. Also, would it not be harder work and for that reason create a higher risk of the site owner giving up?

 

[Chadook]

I think it is little hard to promote, since there are lot of people from different cultures, and it depends on people's interests, Some people build their forum as Non-English Forum since they don't speak English. i Know a very active forum speaks Arabic, it has a huge member base of Tunisians (including me).