Allow description and title to have alternative translations provided

[patcon]

Re-ticketed from :memo: 2020-08-29 call notes

Auto-translation would suffice, but also simply a UI to allow for translations in multiple languages by moderator.

• client-admin: an input method would be needed so that conversation moderator could add translations in multiple languages
• server: (optional) auto-translation (via service like Google Translate) might be helpful
• client-participation: title/description would need to switch with browser language

cc @sarilouis @patrickas (suggested by)

[willcohen]

To date, the workaround I've been using here has been to fully extract all of the title intro description text out of the conversation config, and instead place it on a different page that can handle multiple languages, limiting the conversation embed's context as much as possible to reflect just the statement interface. There is a little bit of friction here if, for example, the embedding page uses a drop-down for manual language selection, while polis is autodetecting based on browser.

[metasoarous]

Thanks for chiming in on this @willcohen.

One tip that may be helpful is that you can set the default language via a data-ui-lang parameter on the embed container. This lets you manually specify which language is used for the UI components, instead of depending on browser setting detection. That should get around the friction you identify.

All that having been said, it would indeed be great if manual translations for title and description were supported, and if these could be selected by data-ui-lang or auto detection, along with the rest of the UI. This would certainly save some work on the side of embedding implementation.

However, I'm weary of automatic translation for title and description, given how important these could be for context. It may be okay for the description, if it's opt in (click a button, like for the comments), but may be awkward/problematic for the title.