Inside LabourStart

LabourStart has lead the way in the international trade union movement with its 22 languages but we need to do more. We know that many of our pages retain elements of English and are not as user-friendly as they might be to non-English speakers.

Andy Funnell in France has made a number of helpful suggestions which I have begun implementing. I welcome other suggestions as well as offers to help.

Here’s what we’ve done today:

1. The searchbox and mailing list signup now end with the more universal ‘OK’ rather than the English ‘Go’.
2. In the French version – and soon others – the ‘search union websites with Solicomm’ phrase has been translated.
3. In the French version – and others if they want – ‘ActNOW’ on the front page has been translated into French. I realize that in some languages, they would prefer to stick with ‘ActNOW’.
4. I’ve now separated out top stories from others – in the French version with two separate titles and in all others, for the moment, with a horizontal bar. Your suggestions for how to title the two sections would be appreciated.
5. I’ve improved the French translation of the signup to our mailing list phrase – the ones we were using were taken from the IUF site, but apparently the translations are not what our correspondents want to see.
6. I’ve fixed a bug which meant that if you clicked on, for example, ‘Suisse’ next to a story on the French page it would show you English language stories from Switzerland. Now it shows the French ones. This is fixed for all languages.