Kurdish and Mongolian and Luganda, oh my!

June 4, 2008 5:29 AM

What are the most multilingual websites on the web?

In helping computer illiterate people to use the web I like to be able to put them in front of a site in their own language. I have been using bbc.co.uk until now, as it has 33 languages, but the drawback is firstly that it only has 33 languages, and also that it is a news site, and the news from some of these countries is often somewhat upsetting. There are about 18 languages available on wikipedia.org, but I am a little hesitant as the content is so changeable.

Individual sites are good for really obscure languages, but I am ideally looking for one site that is available in a hundred languages. Ideally I am looking for as uncontroversial sites as possible, stuff like pop-culture, food, sport and lifestyle etc. I already have a lady who found something political online that she disagrees with and wants me to remove!

posted by Iteki to computers & internet (2 comments total)

Wikipedia is written in over 200 languages.
posted by rom1 at 5:42 AM on June 4, 2008

Could you do Google searches for innocuous things in their languages? You can limit Google to only search pages in one specific language. They have options for 43 languages. I don't know if it's important for all of your students to be looking at the same page, because then this wouldn't work.

I think the Wikipedia could definitely work if you choose a noncontroversial page. Things don't change that often especially if you choose a page on some food ingredient or something.
posted by bluefly at 6:49 AM on June 4, 2008