Football talk - whatever your language
Post categories: World Cup 2010,ÌýWorld Cup Have Your Say
| 11:31 UK time, Thursday, 10 June 2010
Fans of the regular programme may recall the rather impressive Super Power Nation day that ran at Shoreditch Town Hall in March this year, during which a world first was trialled - a multi-lingual live chat board, using automated translation, that allowed users of seven 91Èȱ¬ language websites to talk to each other over the language barriers.
And now, we're going to do it all over again - for the World Cup.
This time going under the name of World Cup Team Talk, the message board will be live online from 1315 GMT for the opening ceremony, and then run through the first game - South Africa against Mexico.
It's your chance - as part of World Cup Have Your Say - to talk about your hopes for your country, or to have a bit of banter with fans across the world, without language getting in the way.
I was managing the English side of the message board back in March, and although we gave people complete freedom to talk about whatever they wanted, it became quite clear early on that one thing people in nearly every country wanted to talk about was football.
We had some fantastic comments - an apology in advance for Diego Maradona from an Argentine was a favourite of mine - and with the experiment a success, it became obvious that it would be great to do it again as part of World Cup Have Your Say.
The system works by automatically translating whatever you type into all the other supported languages. This time around, you'll be able to instantly see in English comments made in Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Vietnamese and Welsh.
And it works the other way round too - comments made in those languages will automatically appear in English.
The system works by translating whatever you type into all the other supported languages. We have chosen on this occasion to use .
We've made some changes to the message board - most importantly, you can now track responses to your messages - and you can also pick which team you're supporting at the tournament.
This is one of the most exciting experiments I've been involved in - and for it to be part of World Cup Have Your Say is fantastic. I look forward to reading your comments tomorrow!
Follow World Cup Team Talk live online from 1315 GMT on Friday 11 June.
