You have no idea how much I would LOVE to be able to provide our sites in all the major languages of the world!! It would be so incredibly useful in so many ways and would help us accelerate our dream of making SFI into a true, global giant.
Alas, doing so is ENORMOUSLY daunting! Over the past 10+ years, SFI has grown to many, many hundreds of Webpages, some of which are static, some of which are created dynamically from various databases and read differently depending on the viewer's status, rank, etc.
There are also hundreds of images used in the pages, many of which would have to be addressed due to words being in the images.
We also employ hundreds of system e-mails (newsletters, training articles, sales notifications, account notices, and many, many more).
Manually converting all of this to even just one new language would take years, and that's if SFI never changed, which is far, far from the reality. The fact is, SFI is constantly and continually evolving and changing. And often times one seemingly minor change affects dozens and dozens of Web pages and system e-mails. Truly, it is a challenge just to make sure we keep everything current in English!
We're also constantly cranking out weekly newsletters, new training articles, etc., which would all require even more massive translation efforts.
So am I saying that SFI is and always will be an English-based program? Absolutely not! In addition to Google translation options on our Websites, we also support native languages in the "My Region" and "My Country" sub-forums at the SFI Forum. The SFI system also supports non-Western alphabets and characters in the PSA Mailer, CSA Mailer, and TeamMail; and affiliates can choose among e-cards in multiple languages. And we continue to explore other language options for the SFI program.
That said, I'm sure that any of you who have used the real-time "machine" Google translation services mentioned above have likely been disappointed with it and feel the translations are poorly done. We agree, and that's why we continue to search and research for a better solution. If you're aware of better translation services/software, PLEASE let us know at our Support Desk.
Why not just translate the major Gateways? They only have a small amount of text. Surely SFI could get them translated into the major languages, right?
Actually, we already tried that. We made a Spanish version of our number one Gateway (the /FREE Gateway) available a little while back to test this idea, with less than stellar results.
Even if it had been more successful...then what?!
Once they've signed up, EVERYTHING ELSE would be in English. Wouldn't this be a complete and utter "dead-end" for anyone who signed up at these new Gateways but who cannot read English? What would be the point of bringing them in, only to then leave them "stranded?" Would they not be completely frustrated? Would this not be a complete exercise in futility...and a complete waste of your time and effort?
And, yes, we could go a little further and translate, for example, the Getting Started section and/or LaunchPad. But we would still run into the same big problem, just slightly later. Non-English speaking affiliates would still quickly run into deadends all over the Affiliate Center which would be very bad. And essentially translating the ENTIRE Affiliate Center unfortunately just doesn't work; it brings us back to real-time "machine" translation services like Google Translate.