PEP-NET goes multi-lingual 6. October 2009 – 09:27 by Rolf Luehrs

The PEP-NET blog has developed very well in the recent months. However, we believe that there is still room for improvement. One thing we have now addressed is multilingualism.

There are several reasons for this enhancement: First of all we are convinced that (e-) participation is in most cases dealing with local or regional issues. There are amazing projects we will never hear about on this blog because the involved or responsible parties do not feel comfortable to write about them in English.

Secondly public administrations are as well focused on their local, regional or national themes. The motivation for many of them to join our international network is currently not strong enough. This hopefully changes if they could communicate about their experiences and demands in their own language and also exchange opinions among each other.

Finally, we are an European network and what is more typical for Europe than all the different languages we are talking in – for the good and the bad.

We are nevertheless hoping (and confident:) that most of the contributions will still be posted or translated in English. Our partner ASAEL has shown that this is possible. But it is no longer mandatory. To prevent us ending up in the Confusion of Tongues, we have provided little flags in the top right corner where our readers may choose to read postings in all or only in particular languages.

We started with Spanish/ English since up to now postings have only been written in these two languages. But we will add other flags as soon as our members are starting to use them.

Feedback is highly appreciated

Tags: inenglish, PEP-NET