April 15, 2017 — Global marketing takes more than just enabling traffic to your website from other countries. Encouraging multilingualism and cultural diversity will help determine how involved your business can be with the online world. In this presentation I will discuss WHY it is important to cater to foreign audiences in their native languages and why translation is the next step to grow a global business.

I’ll cover the importance of translation being done correctly and some of the best tools and practices that are widely available for WordPress website translation. This will include:

How Translation (or lack of) can Affect your Business Reputation
Common Mistakes or Mistranslations
Ways to Connect with your International Audience

I will have a special section on optimizing eCommerce websites for different languages. This will include how to create a pleasant experience that encourages your consumers to convert, return, and advocate for your business.

Presentation Slides »

April 14, 2017 — About half a year ago I gave a talk at a WordCamp in my country.

A big fat elephant had been sitting in the middle of the room since WordPress in had existed in our language, and at that WordCamp I pointed right at it.

I demonstrated how terribly frustrating the presence of that elephant was for people who got to sit in its shadow.

I also presented a plan to get the elephant out of the room in orderly fashion, and bring in unicorns instead.

Many people cheered when I had finished the talk. A few said nothing. Nobody argued the beauty of unicorns.

A couple of weeks later I went to Rosetta and proposed the localizing community should retire the elephant soon now.

Then I introduced the unicorns.
Hell broke loose.

Some people argued unicorns didn’t exist (while looking right at them), and what I had presented was unethical.

Others said the elephant had officially been approved to sit in the room, and as long as no official regulation existed to replace that statute, it would be beyond irresponsible to proceed removing an official animal from an official room, and besides, who believed in unicorns anyways.

A couple of people started to cast rocks.
Luckily, I had friends who helped me out.

When the sun finally came out again, we picked up our courage and moved on.

I kept looking after the unicorns.

I read books and articles about elephants and unicorns, and how that elephant possibly had become so official. And how unicorns were becoming official as well—slowly, but steadily.

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There is a filthy big little shame sitting in WordPress’ localized user interfaces, in many languages with grammatical genders: Women are discriminated by default. This talk addresses the need to solve that dilemma—and examples how it possibly can be solved.

Presentation Slides »

April 3, 2017 — WordPress is growing rapidly! It now powers 26% of the web. One of the main reasons for it’s global success is, that WordPress speaks more than 100 languages! Who translates WordPress? And how can we get involved? This is the story of how you, as a WordPress Theme or Plugin author can grow your products by connecting to the Polyglots community.

Presentation Slides »

January 23, 2017 — Dave Loodts is a self employed WordPress designer/developer, SEO and marketing consultant at http://www.davel.be.

He is a big believer in giving back to the WordPress community and is the co-organizer of WordCamp Antwerp as well as WordPress Meetup groups in Antwerp and Hasselt (links). Dave also is the Global Translation Editor of nl_be team as well as the administrator for the WordPress Dutch Belgium website.

For the full descrion go to the WordPress TV blog.

December 6, 2016 — Det är lätt som en plätt att översätta!

June 1, 2016 — Global WordPress Translation Day Recap + Emoji Fun
w/ Petya & Sonja Leix & whoever’s brave enough to get on screen

June 1, 2016 — How to translate WordPress to Portuguese
with Claudio Sanches, General Translation Editor for WordPress in Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)

June 1, 2016 — How to translate WordPress to Lithuanian
with Justina Baskyte, General Translation Editor for WordPress in Lithuanian

June 1, 2016 — Saurabh Shukla and Gagan Deep Singh are General Translation Editors of WordPress in Hindi

June 1, 2016 — Translating WordPress to Bulgarian / Превод на WordPress на български
with Petya Raykovska, Global Translation Editor for bg_BG