The Open Road: Conference Presentation
Pino Migliorino Managing Director Cultural
Perspectives / Janice Oliver, Australian Quarantine Information Service
Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service and Cultural Perspectives
A pdf version of the paper is now available (40kb)
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The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service has developed its English language website to fulfill an educational as well as a service provider role.
The multilingual component of this site was a necessary add on given that many of the people AQIS is trying to deliver its quarantine message to - international visitors and Australian residents - come from a non-English speaking background.
Some of the areas that we would like to discuss in our paper include:
Audience identification
- the importance of defining your target market and catering to their needs
- how the appropriate language groups for this project were identified (eg analysis of statistics from AQIS seizures database, travel market, Internet usage in overseas countries etc)
Identifying documents
- how documents were identified for translation based on audience needs
Navigation
- where to place multilingual information on the web site
- gatekeeper versus easy access
- identifying useful hyperlinks from translated documents
Registration with search engines
- including relevant metadata
- which search engines to use in an international environment
PDF vs other formats
- download time and printout issues
- alt tags, etc
Technical problems encountered
- overcoming technological limitations to make a truly interactive multilingual site
The next step: From Access to Fulfillment
- enabling site users to communicate directly with AQIS in their language of choice
Assumption of Audience's basic Internet skills and hardware
- Mac, PC, browser versions etc
Importance of marketing the site through the right channels
- look at content and market accordingly (for AQIS it was embassies, travel
industry, international students etc