I was thinking about this all night.
Giving a service like Tapastic, only in english, is a limit. A lot of potential readers are spanish, french, korean, italian, german and a lot of other languages too. For example I can read in english, but it is much more satisfying to read in my native language. So, if there is the possibility, I switch to italian.
There are three different ways to have multilanguage support:
1) Multiple webcomics
This is the actual way Tapastic suggested: Each author will have to publish a different webcomic for each language.
GOOD:
- Only a few additional code is needed, in order to be able to select a specific language during search.
BAD:
- The number of webcomics displayed are multiplied for the number of languages they are available in, carrying confusion in the readers. Imagine the home page function "Trend comics" where the filter selects the webcomics with more views or likes. It can be that the exactly same webcomic, but in two different languages, are listed. No fair.
2) Same episode, multipe languages
The author will publish the episode in english, together with the same episode in another language, in the same "post".
GOOD:
- Each webcomic is listed only once.
BAD:
- Webcomics with more than two languages will result in great confusion. Readers are usually interested in only one language and having to scroll down to see their own could be stressing.
3) Multilanguage support
As described by me in some posts above, the author will insert each episode separately for each language, but the webcomic is always the same.
GOOD:
- Languages are separated. It is possible to have the english version at the episode #30 and the italian at the #45, for example.
- Filters are possible. Readers can have a list of comics in a specific language.
- Statistics are more accurate and advertisements can be sold accordingly and related to specific language.
BAD:
- This implies a little bit of coding and, maybe, a modification in the database structure.
I want also to remind that in all this process Tapastic will not be responsible about translations. The site shall stay in english only, comics translations are author responsibility. So, no legal problems in that.
