Translating the Ethereum Foundation blog

1 year ago 226

Since the archetypal station successful December 2013, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) blog has been the superior mode teams wrong the EF communicate. From announcements astir events, to grant waves, protocol upgrades, regular updates from circumstantial teams oregon discussing Ethereum's imaginativeness and roadmap, the blog has been a adjuvant assets for those looking to enactment successful the loop.

However, there's been 1 large problem: contempt our planetary Ethereum community, this accusation has chiefly lone been disposable successful English. Accessing this accusation is simply a situation for the billions of non-English speakers astir the world.

ethereum.org and the Translation Program

We've already seen ethereum.org show a successful, community-driven model for Ethereum translations. In 2019, ethereum.org began translating its educational, open-source contented into aggregate languages. Over time, this effort has scaled to 48 languages available and millions of words translated each twelvemonth by thousands of unpaid contributors.

A captious constituent of the Translation Program's occurrence is its thousands of enthusiastic contributors. For many, translating is 1 of the astir meaningful ways they tin lend to the Ethereum ecosystem successful bid to learn, teach, and springiness backmost to the community.

Ethereum.org presently has:

3,800 contributing translators
48 languages unrecorded connected site
2.9 cardinal words translated successful 2021
1.9 cardinal words translated successful 2022 truthful far

Are radical utilizing the translations?

The ethereum.org team's experimentation with translations sheds airy connected the worth of making Ethereum contented disposable successful aggregate languages. The takeaway has been clear: the much contented that we translate, the greater the percent of wide postulation goes to translated pages. The inclination has been steady, with translated contented driving 5% of pageviews successful precocious 2019 to present comprising 22% of full pageviews. This makes intuitive sense—even assemblage members proficient successful English self-report preferring speechmaking successful their autochthonal language.

The astir implicit translation of the ethereum.org contented is successful Chinese Simplified. The result? 8% of each postulation to ethereum.org is to the Chinese Simplified mentation of the website.

Translate each the things!

As the occurrence of translations connected ethereum.org became apparent, different wide opportunities for translation arose.

The Ethereum Staking Launchpad, an interactive usher to go a solo staker and acceptable up a validator, has been translated into 20 languages.

Since aboriginal 2022, we person besides added immoderate translations to prime blog posts (e.g. recent testnet upgrades). However, these were a suboptimal, impermanent solution fixed the blog didn't natively enactment internationalization. Translations weren't easy indexable, searchable, oregon intuitive to find.

Blog updates: what has changed?

Below is simply a speedy round-up of the enactment we've done truthful acold and what we program to amended next.

Internationalization support

As of today's launch, the EF blog has afloat internationalization support, meaning erstwhile you pick a language to presumption the blog (e.g. blog.ethereum.org/zh), you volition beryllium capable to presumption each posts successful your people language. This update includes a language-specific hunt feature) and dedicated RSS feeds for each connection (e.g. blog.ethereum.org/zh/feed.xml). We besides made layout improvements for right-to-left languages, similar Arabic.

Performance improvements

As portion of the blog rebuild, we migrated the codification to an wholly caller tech stack (from Jekyll to Next.js). Next.js is simply a modern web model optimized for end-user performance. We expect show upgrades to beryllium noticeable by everyone, but those without entree to high-speed net should spot the astir important improvements successful loading speeds and idiosyncratic experience.

Accessibility improvements

This rebuild besides improves wide accessibility of the blog by providing amended acquisition with surface readers, improved keyboard navigation, and immoderate colors updates to summation the contrast. These improvements are mostly acknowledgment to our UI library, Chakra, which adheres intimately to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)—shout retired to their squad of unfastened root developers!

UI/UX improvements

We simplified the tract paper to amended the navigation acquisition crossed devices. We besides redesigned the archive and search pages to contiguous contented successful a clearer way.

Future plans

While this caller blog is simply a melodramatic betterment from the erstwhile version, we inactive person further upgrades we'd similar to make.

Email subscriptions

As portion of the blog's rebuild, we enhanced enactment for RSS readers. So alternatively of having to periodically cheque the blog oregon relying connected our Twitter for updates, you tin subscribe to the RSS feed of your preferred language.

However, successful 2022, radical expect a much straightforward option: email notifications. This is adjacent connected our precedence database arsenic we judge this would beryllium a important betterment successful the blog's idiosyncratic acquisition for all. Stay tuned!

Expanded languages

ethereum.org has demonstrated the request for a wide assortment of languages. Today we're launching with support for 16 languages but we're hoping to grow these options soon. Which brings america to our adjacent point...