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!

[Atheist Universe]

One of our admins reported this from an English group:

[Evan]

Hey Atheist!

It's hard to examine these issues on Creators. Do you have a Help Center ticket handy, where you've included steps on how to see these issues?

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Atheist Universe]

Yes I do.

ref:00D8cCLt.5004G9IMN

Talking with Blake.

It's completely random.

How to reproduce: load a group page, any group.

I post it here in case it happens to someone else.

[Sathish Agpala]

Is any plan of of providing language switch option in home page?

Example 

http://shivallibrahmins.com/en

http://shivallibrahmins.com/kn

[Eric Suesz]

We hope to get there, Sathish. But, we're starting with Groups and building our way to offering full language support in this manner. 

[Evan]

Yes.

[Franco Mercalli]

That's really great!

Our Network is in Italian, but we have an English language Group for Foreing Guests: this feature is exactly what we needed.

Thank you very much for your effort!

[David Ebel]

I was trying it out and somehow my network in now ALL in Spanish ... and I cannot read or speak it... HELP!!!!

 

[Atheist Universe]

Yes, Spanish appears to be leaking.

We have similar problems.

[Glozal]

Great feature can't wait until every member can select their language! I hope this is coming soooooooon!

[George Montgomery]

Excellent will done to Ning !

[David Ebel]

HELP!!!!

 

I was trying to create a Spanish discussion group and somehow converted the entire site to Spanish... and I DO NOT know Spanish!!!!

 

I need a bilingual Creator to help me get the site back to English.

 

I can be reached at [private info removed]

 

I promise not to do it again!!!  ;-)

 

David