How to Blog in Two Languages at Once?
When I first started writing in my blog, almost five years ago, choosing the language to write it wasn’t an issue. Most of the blogs out there were in English, expressing yourself in Arabish wasn’t frowned upon or considered annoying, plus the language of the internet whether you like it or not is English and so are all your settings and blogs you read. Personally, I chose my laptops without an Arabic keyboard just because I find Arabic and technology a bit exhausting.
As time moved on and the social media evolved, the platforms and audience alike, writing and expressing yourself in Arabic aren’t as exhausting anymore. As a matter of fact, some things can only make sense in Arabic and readers seem to have outgrown the Arabish. I still write in my blog in English, I can express myself in both languages equally fine but I think my blog should also be a window to the world regarding my life in Kuwait rather than just writing about Kuwait for people living in Kuwait. Hence, I will never give up writing in English in my blog, but I do admit that writing in Arabic will give you more audience plus open up a new collection of topics you wouldn’t usually address in English.
The question is, how to do it? Looking at my fellow bloggers, some write the same post twice in two languages and post them one after the other. Some write in both English and Arabic in the same post, switching between sentences. Only Mark seems to have an entirely separate Arabic version of his blog which won’t confuse the readers but I don’t suppose its easy to operate two different blogs in two different languages. There are some solutions for bilingual blogs with wordpress plugins and I’ve tried a couple of them but they messed up my entire blog and I gave up.
So I’m asking you, my dear reader since you are the one who read blogs, what do you think is the best bilingual solution for Arabic and English to coexist in one blog? Especially given that not all posts can be written in both languages? Dear fellow bloggers/developers, do you know of any bilingual solutions for your website blog? I am thinking something either like a tab per post or a different copy of the blog that will load after recognising your preferred browser language but I’m not sure either. What do you think?
