J’ai reçu de nombreux retours de lecteurs francophones signalant que le site SuttaCentral est difficile à naviguer, particulièrement pour ceux qui ne comprennent pas l’anglais et qui ignorent encore comment changer la langue. Cependant, même après avoir mis le site en français, les lecteurs se sentent souvent perdus face à la multitude d’options et de liens disponibles.
Je prévois donc de réaliser une vidéo avec partage d’écran pour guider les utilisateurs lors de leur première visite sur le site. À votre avis, quels sont les points prioritaires à aborder et ceux à ne surtout pas oublier ?
English:
I’ve received a lot of feedback from French readers that the SuttaCentral site is difficult to navigate, especially for those who don’t understand English and don’t yet know how to change the language. However, even after putting the site into French, readers often feel lost when faced with the multitude of options and links available.
So I’m planning to produce a screen-sharing video to guide users through their first visit to the site. In your opinion, what are the most important points to address and those that should not be forgotten?
Great idea! I once did that in German, but it didn’t take too long before it was completely outdated … so much so that meanwhile, I’ve removed it from the Dhammaregen site.
The great thing about SuttaCentral is that is is continually developed and improved—but the downside of this is that no instruction can ever be “permanent”; not even for a comparably short while.
Well the most important thing to show is of course how to change the language setting!
Then I’d show what that does: on suttaplex cards, you see translations in your chosen language more prominently.
When we’re there, I’d open a sutta and show the “view” options.
Then I’d perhaps go through the home page and have a short look at the resources linked there.
That’s what comes to mind right now. Perhaps these are the most important things? Still leave something for the user to find out themselves.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that even if a first visitor opens SuttaCentral via a link that includes a language setting other than English, the browser nevertheless changes that to English. So it’s easy to think English is the only language to navigate SuttaCentral.
I see that in an anonymous browser window, so that’s what a user sees who hasn’t opened SuttaCentral before. Only after actively changing the language setting in your browser (and again refreshing the page) will you be able to see the language that you want to see.
My advice is to make short videos that contain discrete topics. This makes it easier to create updated content since often it will only be part of the interface that changes. As well, even though youtube allows “chapters”, I find it better to have 5 or 6 short videos on individual topics instead of a long one.
Be sure to make the titles of the videos how to do things rather than the odd names of features on the site (e.g. “suttaplex” or “yellow brick road”)
I think search is essential. Both for finding suttas by citation and Pali title, but also just for topic searches (even though technically it’s doing word searches not topic searches). I’d advise two videos for search. One for basics and one for advanced. Perhaps even a third for searching in Pali. However I wouldn’t spend too much time producing these since of all parts of the site, this is the one most likely to change. But a basic introduction will probably be stable.
In general, I think that for most people new to the suttas just arriving on the home page will be confounding. You really have to know exactly what you are looking for (and often exactly where to find it). This is why I built a different experience on the SuttaFriends.org site. SuttaCentral does have the indexes. They are hard to find (in my opinion) and they are not translated into French yet (and they won’t be in French alphabet order even when they are, at least not for now).
Certainly the site will make more sense once your current legacy text project is complete. Then at least there will be more things for French readers to discover.
Lots of people don’t realize there is a click to look up feature when reading a Pali text. Unfortunately there isn’t a French dictionary. And not many French segmented texts.
It may not be a priority for new users, but a brief video about reference numbers might be good, although I don’t know how well they are coded into French legacy texts (maybe not at all). If your audience will also be reading the English or German segmented translations then it would be relevant.
One thing I think almost no one figures out is how simple the URL structure is. If you just type suttacentral.net/mn118 it will take you right to a suttaplex card. That’s a skill for someone knowledgeable in sutta citations but not so computer literate.
A third project (may you live long!) could be to make a French translation of the chapter lists from In the Buddha’s Words. I thought that there was a single post here on the site that had them all in a single page, but all I can find are posts for each chapter, e.g. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s In The Buddha’s Words V: The Way to a Fortunate Rebirth
in French could be a valuable point of entry. One technical change would be to include links to the suttaplex cards instead of to Bhante’s English translations. I could help with that if you like. Or perhaps you could even link them to existing French translations.
This, of course, is different from the project of videos explaining how to use the site. But it would give people a nice entry into the suttas so they could naturally get experience using the site. So it fits with the “help French speakers read the suttas” meta project you are doing.
That’s a great idea to do for German as well! The book is translated into German, so at least some are familiar with it; and then reading the respective suttas in German on SuttaCentral or Dhammaregen would only be a mouse click away!
That list could then be linked to the “getting started” page on SuttaCentral where the book is mentioned.
Alright… Here is my first shot at the video, chapters and subtitles available.
I am still correcting the subtitles, but feedback is already welcome. Separate videos were recorded for each section, so if re-recording is necessary, I can just record the specific section.
I just listened up to where you show the languages, and you say that the interface is translated into all these languages. This is not correct. Only some languages—the number is increasing, however, due to Ven. @Snowbird’s tireless efforts—have (parts of) the interface translated. All languages mentioned in the list have either at least one translated text and/or at least parts of the interface.
Great effort!
I occasionally try to re-awaken the dried up French comprehending braincells that lurk inside me. I was satisfied that some of them still work.
I haven’t watched all the way through, but I see that it’s not until 4 minutes in that you show how to change the site to French, even though you are showing a site already in French. This probably needs to be at the beginning. Watching this video up to that point there were sections of the site that I don’t know I’ve even bothered to visit.
I agree with Ven. Sabbamitta about the order of priorities
The sections Changer la langue du site and then Comment naviguer dans le Suttapitaka et … and then Les Longs Discours (DN) etc.
The content prior to this is really secondary to what most users will need.
This is another topic that Alain and I are also discussing. I will follow up on this in a DM.
