Localization: Create dutch version of website

[stijn-dejongh]

Localize website to Dutch

Reasoning and value proposition

Many of our professional and personal contacts do not master the English language sufficiently to read the patterns in the knowledge base fluently. Providing a pre-translated version of the website would enable them to grasps the contents more easily, and avoids browser-based automated translations from messing up the intent of the KT page.

Acceptance criteria / tasks

• Enable HuGo multilingual mode
• Translate site content
• Translate navigation elements
• Display "Language switcher" in UI

Approach

Shadow feature phased rollout

Translate the site first using crowdin for easier collaboration and content update synchronization.
Depoy the translated website, but do not refer to it explicitly (shadow feature), once QA approved, add the language toggle feature to expose the new feature.

[stijn-dejongh]

MultiLingual mode was added, as can be seen on the main website deployment.
The main challenge is finding a way to keep the original english text and the translations in a consistent state, as well as providing the translated content.
And experiment using a public translation website proved to be interesting, but ran into the same problem as in the past: lack of engagement and contributions, causing it to not be worth the monetary investment in the translation software.
To be re-evaluated in the future.