multilingual subreddit question

[u/MartinoStone]

Hey community

I’m currently working on designing a concept for a subreddit—it’s a scientific society and a creative union of photographers that I’m a member of, and the other members and I want to make it international.

Some members may not speak English, and I wouldn’t want the language to become a barrier for them.

- We want it to be open to professionals, beginners, researchers, and anyone interested in photography, observation, and learning. We’re currently trying to decide whether to make the community genuinely multilingual without fragmenting it, or keep English as the main language.

maybe:

- English main 80+%

- other languages welcome ~10-20%

Here’s the question: Should we make it multilingual, or might that hinder its growth? Perhaps it will be inconvenient for members, or maybe the platform’s algorithms don’t favor this format, so would it be better to stick with English as the universal language?

I’d appreciate it if anyone who has faced a similar situation could share their experience and the decisions they made—or just share their thoughts on this.

I’d be grateful for any advice, comments, or recommendations!

[u/CitoyenEuropeen]

You can check r/EuropeanCulture for a working example.

[u/MartinoStone → u/CitoyenEuropeen]

thank you!

[u/lunarwolf2008]

reddit has auto translation, so it probably wouldnt fragment it much

[u/GaryNOVA]

I’ve never had a problem in r/SalsaSnobs . We get English mostly but have some Spanish. It helps that our moderators speak Spanish. But we have translation features that are getting better and better on Reddit. It’ll get there.

It hasn’t hindered us at all. Maybe it’s the culture of people who are into salsa, but I think it actually helps us.

[u/MartinoStone → u/GaryNOVA]

Great to hear that! Cool experience

[u/shhhhh_h]

I hate that several of my subs still have English only rules. I think it’s tantamount to language imperialism ngl, which is a problem with the internet in general, so it’s admirable to do the work and make it multilingual and inclusive.

Will it be a little harder, sure! But mostly because of having the duplicate auto mod rules in different languages. The translation feature works almost all the time now, I even saw it live in the queue the other day. I’d also suggest recruiting a diverse mod team if possible (with different languages come different cultures which can affect moderation, so diverse comods helps us shake off the innate human ethnocentrism) and making sure there’s a chat to touch base in.

[u/MartinoStone → u/shhhhh_h]

Appreciate so detailed response!