Should I blog in English AND in French?
So far, although I’m a Frenchman, I’ve been blogging in English only. Indeed, one of the reasons why I enjoy blogging is that Tech IT Easy allows me to confront my views with people that don’t necessarily think the same way – and if I may generalize a little bit, this is something less likely to happen between people who share the same culture & language. Furthermore, blogging helps me keep in touch with good friends living abroad and meeting fantastic and driven new guys, with lots of ideas.
However, I feel like writing stuff on which my friends from abroad wouldn’t give a damn: Johnny Halliday decided to leave France for Switzerland to avoid taxation (I think this is a good move: it might create a media hype and urge politicians to do something at last about France’s tax burdens); I got some really crappy service by my online bank ING Direct and I’m planning to move out quickly; some French-only e-Commerce are doing a pretty good job and don’t plan to move abroad, uninteresting stuff for an international readership.
As you may have understood, I want to blog in English AND French (and mostly in English, don’t worry – maybe 80% in English, 20% in French) but will start doing it on the condition that:
1) My non-French speaking readership (80% of my readers) tells me “it’s allright, I won’t feel frustrated by not understanding every single post of yours”.
2) My French-speaking readership (20% of my readers but 50% of my comments) tells me it’s a good idea that won’t keep them away from posting comments (the French post less comments on English language blogs than on French-speaking blogs).
I need your help to improve this blog, please take a sec to tell me if I’d be right or wrong to switch in Frenglish.
Nota Bene 1: Michel de Guilhermier, a French blogger and entrepreneur, did switch to English – French from French, only a while ago. Botton line: traffic increase I guess, but I noticed his posts in English don’t quite get as many comments as his posts in French.
Nota Bene 2: As I’m sure you have understood from my former posts, I blog for comments, not for traffic. The day I’ll stop getting comments (most of the time value-creating), I’ll stop blogging.
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That’s a tough question I’ve been asking myself for a couple of months now and haven’t found the final answer. Not that I believe there is one optimum answer for everyone. And I’m not even blogging yet, just thinking about it.
I encourage you to blog in both languages. While English is the only way to integrate with the international IT community, it just wouldn’t make sense for a French to write in English about French topics intended for a French-speaking audience. IMO that just sounds weird and would probably mean that nobody would show special interest in these topics: people from the rest of the world wouldn’t care and the ones who do prefer to read about it in their native language on the next blog.
That said, there are several ways to set up multilingual blogging.
(1) You could create a second French-only blog. IMO this is a good idea if the topics on the 2 blogs don’t overlap, i.e. you write about IT-related stuff exclusively in English and all the other stuff exclusively in French.
(2) Put everything in one blog but provide 3 different feeds/views of your homepage for English only, French only, and both. Thus, nobody has to read stuff they don’t understand anyway.
(3) Leave everything as is and let your readers skip the content they don’t want to read manually.
And you can always try to encourage people to post comments in any language they feel most comfortable with.
Thanks for your wise input Ole. I’m sitting on a fence: I hope starting to blog in French as well will alienate some of my non-French speaking readers.
To answer one of your points: I don’t feel like opening a second, French-only, blog. It’s either English only or English 80% – French 20%, but all on Tech IT Easy.
keep blogging in english … ui wan’t to improve my communication skills.
the other reasons you must keep blogging in english are allready listed above by … you
FA, if I start blogging in French, I won’t drop posts in English and you won’t see less posts in English. On top of these, you’ll get some posts in French as well, maybe once or twice a week.
it’s allright, I won’t feel frustrated by not understanding every single post of yours
=) really, it’s ok.
Selon technorati seulement 10% du contenu de la blogosphère est en français. Quelque billets de plus en français ne feront pas de mal.
Hey Aurélien,
Thanks for your advice. 10% of blogs are in French? That’s bloody huge considering that France represents 1% of the World population, demographically speaking.
Sinon super ton blog de techos! J’irai faire un tour approfondi très bientôt – pour moi qui apprend le Java et l’architecture logicielle, c’est parfait.
Jay, there’s even worse than your dilemma: have a look at sisyphosmount.blogspot.com
Thanks Steve, that is an interesting blog indeed. I wish I spoke German though.