Language Settings for Groups, now on Ning!

[Evan]

Do your members speak multiple languages? Make them feel right at home with a new feature now on your Ning Network: Language Settings for Groups.

With Language Settings for Groups, group creators and admins can choose the language for particular groups on the "Edit Group" page, and all parts of the group's interface will appear in that language. When participating in a group with its language set to French, for example, phrases like "Started by" or action links like "Favorite" will be translated to "Créé par" and "Favori." Even better: All email notifications received from participating in the group will be in French, too.

This is perfect for language-orientated groups on your Ning Network, like the French-speaking group on Ning Creators. Members already post in French, but they previously were forced to use an English interface. With this new option, they'll have a much more native and comfortable experience within the group.

Even better, the portions of the user interface that are part of your Ning Network as a whole — the footer, your tabs, the right column — will remain untouched in your network's default language. Member-generated content won't change either, remaining in whatever language it was posted in.

Admin Experience

Network Creators and admins are responsible for their Ning Networks, and they often carefully review new posts throughout their communities. Of course, it could be confusing to try to manage a group if the management tools are in another language. Not everyone might know, for example, that "Supprimer" is the button to click to delete a French group.

To maintain a great and consistent experience, Network Creators or administrators will see all groups in the native network language. Additionally, they will see an informational banner at the top of the group telling them what language the group is using, and allowing Network Creators and administrators to see the group in the custom language, if they wish.

Network Creators and admins can click "View sample" to see the group in the custom language if they want to check out how the group appears to its members. A group's language can be changed at any time from the group's Options tab, where all editing of groups is normally done.

Because this feature is experimental and a significant change to the way groups, languages and emails work, we've launched it via Ning Labs. That's the page on your Dashboard where you can activate experimental features as we prepare them for launch. You can toggle this feature on or off via Ning Labs, but it's off by default.

We'd love your feedback on this new product. We hope this feature will lay the groundwork to eventually providing a language setting at the member level, giving an even better experience for your international and foreign-speaking members. Merci!

[Emmanuel Ace]

[Tyler Durbin]

Wow, he can do something without a teleprompter... 

[Patrick Chappelle]

That comment could apply to any politician. 

[Tiffany Lane-Crane]

LOL, I like that! ;)

[Patrick Chappelle]

[Tiffany Lane-Crane]

I like this one too!

[Robert]

This is great for my Spanish  group - BRAVO

[Fire-Tech]

Sweet! Keep the Groups love coming!

[Brian Floe]

This is a very interesting way to launch multi lingual support, never thought of this. I like the idea very much. Great work!

[Brian Floe]

I wanted to change my "Japan" group to japanese and then send out a message to the group that it was now in their native language ...but how to tell if any of these are "japanese" ??? :))))

 

Screenshot of the language menu:

[Phil McCluskey]

Hi Brian,

It's 日本. I reverse engineered it via Google Translate. Nice catch though; we might want to identify the language in the network's main language as well to make that a bit easier.

Thanks,

Phil

[Brian Floe]

Just like you're doing with "(China)", yes. Thanks for the backwards engineering efforts Phil :)))