They Vote For You is only available in English while many people who are represented by MPs don't speak English well or at all

[equivalentideas]

According to the ABS’s 2012-2013 data (the latest I could find on language), 2% or 500,000 Australian’s don’t speak English at all. Only of longer-standing migrants half described themselves as speaking English very well. The more recently someone migrated to Australia, the less likely they are to speak English very well or at all.

Should They Vote For You be available in other languages to make it more accessible (or accessible at all) to people who don’t speak English well, or just would feel more confident and welcomed reading it in their own language?

Note that the divisions summaries and titles would have to be translated as they came—compared to the interface and site text which are static.

I think one dynamic to recognise here is that people who don't speak English well or at all are not welcomed by Australia’s democratic institutions who don't provide translations. Making our parliament more open should particularly work for people who are currently excluded from participating. In Australia, according to ACOSS:

Adults born in countries where English is not the main language face a much higher risk of poverty
(18.8% using the 50% poverty line) than those born in Australia (11.6%), or in an English speaking
country (11.4%).

This is likely to reflect the difficulties that migrants from non-English speaking countries face in
securing well paid employment in Australia, which include (in many, though not all cases) language
barriers, limited Australian-recognised skills, and discrimination

The ‘profile of poverty’ graph shows that 29.1% of adults living in households below the 50% poverty line are from a non-English speaking country.

These people have a disproportionate need to hold their representatives accountable for acting in their interest.

[storyjesse]

This is a good point to remember and act on earlier rather than later. If we separate the displayed text from the code the same way it is done for most linux programs it will be possible for someone to come and translate the entire site quite easily. I don't have any experience doing this myself, I only figured out how to git clone last week, and I don't work in IT, but after I've scratched my itch of including politicians contact details in their profile I'll see if I can figure out how the multilingual interface is normally done.

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[mlandauer]

In a totally ideal world we would be able to do this but this is so far beyond our capacity to do for only a small percentage of the population. Sad but true

[cofiem]

Could something like https://crowdin.com/ work to help translate They Vote For You?

[mlandauer]

@cofiem I've had quite a lot of experience working with the Alaveteli code base which is internationalised. In of itself the technology is not that complicated but it does slow development down hugely when you want to add something new which needs some new words and you need to add it in all the supported languages before you can properly add the feature.

Also, vetting translations is also no small thing. We put a huge amount of effort into our words and I would hate that to fall apart over a bad translation.