Walt Whitman: I Sing of Myself in Nine Languages

Walt Whitman

I came across a great resource on Walt Whitman’s epic poem Song of Myself.

Walt Whitman Song of Myself

This website intends to present Whitman’s poem in its entirety, along with commentary, in an impressive nine languages. It is the product of a partnership between the International Writing Program and the Walt Whitman Archive at the University of Iowa. The poem is being published in weekly increments (they’re currently up to section 10 of 52).

Even if you’re no fan of Whitman (and I forgive you), if you’re interested in web globalization, give the website a look. It’s very well done.

Here’s a screen shot of the same web page above now displayed in Russian:

Walt Whitman in Russian

The tab structure allows you to change languages on the fly, but never allowing you to lose sight of your own language — something often overlooked on Fortune 100 websites.

Creating a multilingual website doesn’t have to be complicated.

  1. Make the languages easy to find.
  2. Present the language names in the actual languages.
  3. Allow users to easily change languages if needed.

This website does well on all three accounts.

And now I leave you with this, the beginning of this great poem…

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

 

John Yunker
John Yunker

John is co-founder of Byte Level Research and author of Think Outside the Country as well as 19 editions of The Web Globalization Report Card.

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