Shopify (a nice online shop creator) revealed internationalization support a few days ago.

Even more interesting is the way they do translations: crowdsourcing. In their words:

Shopify brings the crowdsourcing concept to the internationalization problem. Any Shopify user can create their own language templates, apply to help edit other language templates, or simply utilize other translated language templates. The original creator of a translation will lead the translation team. He or she can accept and decline assistance and will be notified of any new language strings that come online with new content that affects the checkout process or the PDF order receipts.

A smart solution to a difficult problem. Since I support a multilingual application (Cheez - translated in 18 languages) I would like to have solved this problem in a better way. As it is people send me translations / corrections but I have to do the final editing, merging and including in the application package.

My DSL line was down for the last 2 days, so I had to fall back to dial-up (56kbps that is). I can’t believe how accustomed I have become to broadband! It seemed impossible to download anything… even mail seemed hard to cope with.

I’m glad it’s back.