Wondering if anyone can share some insights on blogging in more than one language, on a single blog platform. Perhaps point me in the direction of a great blog that does it?

You see, I am based in Quebec City, and started my blog last year (March 2011) writing in English at first. I still write occasional posts in English, but experience showed that whenever I wrote in French, in particular with topics that resonated with friends and folks in the tourism industry here, I got more readership and comments.

So in 2012, my intention is to offer a structured approach, where every Tuesday I will post in French, every Thursday I will post in English. I am working on my editorial calendar right now, so that if I add to this schedule with occasional ad hoc posts, i.e. video interview, comment on last-minute trending event, I will do so in either language.

What do you think, is this a good approach? Anyone has experience in blogging in more than one language, on the same blog?

@fredericgonzalo I’ve seen sites in multiple language where you go to different subdomains or subfolders for the language (en.domain.com, domain.com/en/).  I think in those cases, they are targeting different regions as well.  Having the separate sites allows you to have different images (such as headers, banner images) that match the language of your content.

Also, here’s the plugin for @blogsbyheather‘s suggestion!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-translator/

@fredericgonzalo

Great you took my question up I’m currently thinking about the same, I’m writing in english but my 1st. language is German. So I wonder how to post. I guess posting in two languages on your blog is a bit complicate as it could distract your readers. It is the same as with twitter, it depends how much you are posting.

Setting up a second domain could be an alternative but just recently I came across a plugin WPML which looks promising so far. Didn’t tried it yet as I’m still in researching so your post came just in time

@fredericgonzalo Oh you are right, I forgot twitter, same story!

I have followers which are speaking only english or only german. Some German followers do understand english but won’t comment any english tweet, I don’t know the reason. If I post in German, they are going to reply or talk to me.So I just created a second account which I may use in the future to separate my tweets. Sure this is an extra workload but could make a difference. I’m not very attracted by tweets I’m unable to read and I won’t use Google Translate every time so I guess some others out there think the same.Sure, it depends how many followers you have on twitter or on your blog but you always have to figure out if it’s worth.

Using different languages is really not an easy task and to be honest, I didn’t come around any blog to consider it as best-practice. Sure multi-lingual websites are different but blogs or even news portals are mostly in just one language.

I hope to see some more reactions to your post and maybe we all find a great solution. 

@blogsbyheather

Hi Heather!

Visual guiding, great idea! But I think you still get in troubles with your RSS feeds with this solution. 

Currently I see the only choice would be between a second blog in a sub directory / subdomain or the use of a plugin like WPML (didn’t tried it yet).

@blogsbyheather You know, I kinda like that idea of using categories to separate topics by language. Thanks, very useful. @nickrock has a good point about RSS feed, but I will certainly see what can be done with categories or tabs in the meantime.

Still searching for a best-in-class example, though…