Issues of content and structure for a multilingual web site

摘要

Most content on the Web today is in English, but the majority of the Earth's peoples speak languages other than English. To reach a wider audience, future Web sites will have to be multilingual, changing a Web site from one that is American-centric and single-language to one that is globally-oriented and multilingual. While the challenges in creating and maintaining a high-quality Web site in a single language are considerable, working with multiple languages simultaneously creates special challenges, both culturally and technically. This paper outlines issues related to two important aspects of the problem: content and structure. Several representative Web sites are examined to illustrate some of these considerations.