The translations among multiple languages as one of the basic criteriafor the effectiveness of the University Town website

A research of multilingualism was carried out within the framework of researching theuniversity town official websites. The purpose of this work was the analysis of experiences of creatingand functioning that sites to develop Tomsk official website subsequently, which would position thetown as a university town (however, not only). The multilingualism function provides the possibility ofperception and interpretation of information on a website by foreign-language-speaking users, whocould consist of not only students (university entrants) and an academic staff of higher education institutions,but also tourists, potential partners in business, investors, etc. In turn, the work with thesegroups of people influence on competitiveness and prestige level of both the high schools and thetown. Seventy-one university towns (and their websites) all over the world were selected for this research.Different ways to organize a translation were considered. As a result, all websites were dividedinto four large categories: monolingual (where the multilingualism function wasnt provided), with abuilt-in automatic translator (provided by special programs such as Google Translate, online), websiteswhere a professional translation of web pages were provided, and ones which combined two last ways.Pros and cons of each method were identified, and in a case of professional translation - probablemodifications (a partial translation). The result of the work is a conclusion about what way of multilingualismfunction implementation is the most rational and acceptable. It is a combination of professionaltranslation and built-in automatic translator. This is the only way that allows combining a translationquality and a wide choice of available languages. Herewith, the costs are only a little bit higherthan when the professional translation of web pages is carried out only. Thus, this article could be usedas a practical recommendation at a process of the Tomsk official website development.

Keywords

Authors

References