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Our website has many articles in English, and perhaps 20% have Spanish versions. These are very carefully translated, fixed texts (not translated on the fly). This is California so providing Spanish version where we can is important, but speakers of one language can usually understand a few key words in the other.

Is there a consensus on the best or most effective placement for these? Is there evidence whether users prefer all articles on the same topic listed together, versus all articles in the same language listed together?

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Why chose? You could easily have both if you have your taxonomy in order. One is by Language (obviously), one is by Topic (regardless of language). But you should also leave an option to get all results in Spanish only, and English only result. With all of this - you have covered everyones preference from California to Sweden!

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mockup

  • Tab selection that appear above the articles that do have translations.
  • You can also have a call to action button in Spanish "Read in Spanish."
  • A language drop-down to allow viewing of available content in selected language.

(Language drop downs commonly appear in the top right corner, but its relative to your layout. )

Combining languages in one stream of content will be confusing for the non speaker.

You can use Census information to make a data driven decision.

the Census Bureau's Social Characteristics - California & California's language usages on Wikipedia.

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  • Thank you, this is very helpful! Currently this is an old site with static pages, no taxonomy, and no translation options. So alas, a lot of the better options are not yet available. (This will change within the year, I hope.) Edited to add: This is exactly what we do on the content pages: if there's a Spanish version each has an obvious button to get to the other-language version. My question is what to do with, for instance, a listing on another page of the six publications about Ants, 3 of which have Spanish versions. List Eng. & Sp. separately in the list? All Sp. in separate list?
    – Chris
    Commented Aug 12, 2014 at 18:37
  • No problem. You can utilize the ideas shown above statically. The first & second bullet point can be accomplished with links to the translated versions. The third, however, would require some additional code.
    – Brian Dillingham
    Commented Aug 12, 2014 at 18:40
  • Thanks for all this. We do have a separate page listing all Spanish resources. We do have buttons on all 2-language pages for a quick switch to the other-language version. My question is what to do with, for instance, a listing on another page of the six publications about Ants, 3 of which have Spanish versions. List English & Spanish versions of each article next to each other? Or all English articles in one list, Spanish in a separate list?
    – Chris
    Commented Aug 12, 2014 at 18:45
  • All English in one list & all Spanish in another.
    – Brian Dillingham
    Commented Aug 12, 2014 at 18:46
  • "Combining languages in one stream of content will be confusing for the non speaker." There are more people who speak Spanish who have learned English than those who speak English who have learned Spanish. Happy to have helped =) Feel free to mark as answered if you feel I am correct.
    – Brian Dillingham
    Commented Aug 12, 2014 at 18:48

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