Regional Translations

[QauNuckShin]

Do you really need a separate domain name and such for every translation?

I made a small, simple example of how things could be handled here: http://dolkow.se/rl/
Of course it can be done more elegantly, especially the language selection.

What happens is you have the standard site/comic in the background, and then just an overlay with the "translation" (different fonts in my example). The overlay only contains the pieces that need to be changed.

Translating the comic would be the most important thing, right?

[Mae Dean]

Well, in addition to simply translating the comic, they will be doing their own rants and whatnot in the space below it - and each site is treated as its own separate identity. (especially since, for yours to work, it kinda needs ALL the comics to have been translated already.) I like the idea, but it would take away the incentive for people to translate, and I don't want to screw people out of money.

[QauNuckShin]

Like I said, my idea can be performed with much more elegance..

For example, language selection could be done redirecting between reallifecomics.com/ger and reallifecomics.com/esp. No expensive domain names or separate hosting, but still room for determining which part of the site the ad revenues are coming from.

And if there isn't a translation for a particular date, the backend script will just return a tiny transparent picture as an overlay. That would enable people to browse the site in identical ways, substituting English for their own native language where possible.

But hey, it's just my opinion.. I'm pretty sure you have more experience in this than I do.

[Mae Dean]

Well, the nice thing is, the domains actually don't cost that much to the locals. So I have them register it, and cover the costs. So all told, it's not all that bad. Mostly, it would take a LOT of coding to implement it the way you suggest, and basically a complete rewrite of the hosting backend. I'm not really up for that.