Let's start by collecting what's out there...

[Philip Trauring]

The first thing that is probably worthwhile for this list is to start
collecting resources already existent on the net for building
multi-lingual web sites. Although Google doesn't yet allow one to add
links or files to a group (a la Yahoo) - I will set up a web site soon
to collect this information if Google itself doesn't allow for adding
the information to the group site.

One interesting resource I ran across is a Eurescom study on building
multi-lingual web sites. The web site is here:

http://www.eurescom.de/public/projectresults/P900-series/923d1.asp

and you can download the chapters of the study here:

http://www.eurescom.de/~pub-deliverables/P900-series/P923/

The study was done in 2000, so it is probably a bit out of date, but it
seems to cover the major topics in depth. I haven't had a chance to
read it yet, so I can't comment directly on it. If you have read it and
want to give your opinion of it's conclusions, please do.
Philip Trauring

[Sieglinde]

Philip,
Here are a view important points about translation.
1. as much as we need multi translation especially for international
issues such as human rights, computer science and politic or global
information there is the issue of copyright. Every article/essay/paper
written is copyrighted and needs the authors permission to translate.
2. I would like to read articles on the internet written in another
language by a click of a button either in English or German. As a
writer on human rights issues I would be pleased if my article could be
available in all languages by click of a button. So far the available
auto- text- translation destroys the content and the subject is barely
recognizable. In some cases the content becomes misleading because of
inaccurate translation. This applies not only to academic writing also
to human/emotional writing. A grammar-editor cannot correct inaccurate
translated words and create an authentic sentence.
3. I see only one solution.
Why not using the translation software already available, together with
a program that adopts and stores human editing, stores comparable
synonyms and applies the right (not similar words) according to a
structures of sentence in all languages. If just a few human
translators and text editors in every language would use the text
already available on the internet, such program could be established in
no time.
4. My wish as an internet user would be to search for an article on the
subject X in English or German and the article appears even though the
article was original written in Russian.
Sieglinde