Add method of translating site into multiple languages

[mcoirad]

Probably easiest to use google translate button

[mcoirad]

I believe google translate buttons are no longer available by google. Could still use google translate but at the meeting we discussed using manual translations. I'm not sure on the best approach on incorporating translations, i assume React has some frameworks that support localization of apps that we could adapt, or we could have our own method of switching out text based on data in multiple google sheets.

[emhsieh]

Follow up on our Tuesday meeting. Is it easiest for now, to have a "duplicate" 2nd tab (or button?? that goes to 2nd URL?) that is a copy of everything in Spanish?

Sorry I don't understand the backend completely.

Do I understand that everything or most pulls from a google sheet? So in theory... if we get folks to translate a duplicate of the sheet into Spanish, would that be easy to generate a Spanish version on a different tab or URL?

Could this be easier/faster than learning/figuring out how to switch text for the initial launch. Sorry I'm kind of out of my depth so please tell me to sit. down. anytime lol

[mcoirad]

No worries, thanks for thinking it through! I think a quick and dirty solution would be just having multiple versions of the site
as different pages, running off of multiple google sheets. That might be easiest at this point, if we are fine having a multi-page website.

[dmadisetti]

So browsers do have machine translation built in, but the correct way to do this is with i18n standard. There's a react plugin we can use for this:

https://www.mindbowser.com/adding-multi-language-support-using-reactjs/

But this only let's us translate specific sentences etc... Maybe we should prioritize on the major languages this might be used by e.g. Spanish and leverage our network for that? We can also serve a different sheet based on locality

[emhsieh]

Agree with @dmadisetti idea to prioritize major languages, e.g. Spanish first.
Then later, Amharic since we are focusing on DC's Black communities?

Language Access Act of 2004 from DCRA (Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs)

Top 5 spoken languages:

1. Spanish
2. Chinese
3. Vietnamese
4. Korean
5. Amharic

"The Council of the District of Columbia has identified five languages, besides English, as those largely spoken in the District and their population is served by the District government: Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Amharic."

[emhsieh]

Thinking more about this idea on the checklist: Request language assistance button in DC's most used languages

Could a service like telephone language lines be used? (24/7 phone interpreting available)
I imagine how it could work:

• "Call for help" buttons written in Spanish, Amharic
• Calls the number through Spanish or Amharic language line (which number? direct provider or...? Someone who will help them navigate the website?)
• can D4BL fund? I imagine it would be a few calls in any.

Still thinking about how it could work.