I think the internet allows us to work more within global language communities than geography-based communities who happen to speak that language. Here in Spain for example there are millions of English and Arab speaking immigrants who have very low levels of competency in Spanish and with the Hebrew example in the article, I imagine there is a relatively large Hebrew speaking Jewish diaspora living in other countries that might enjoy reading things in Hebrew even though they live in the US or Russia.

It’s not as clear cut a decision as just blogging in your local language because you can, as some of you have rightly pointed out. I guess in the end it all seems to depend on who you want your readers to be and what objectives you have for your blog.

I think those of who speak several languages and enjoy blogging have a wonderful opportunity – by translating our posts we can reach out to more readers – one of the things I’ve always enjoyed about speaking languages is being able to listen to many more and more varied points of view and conversations.

As for me, I’m a Spanish translator and the Managing Director of a small languages company and I’ve been wrestling with this problem for the last couple of months as I’ve set up my new blog and our company websites.

In the end on my own blog I’m going to do two translation related subdomains – one in English and one in Spanish – and the main www about business topics and the stories about my company’s growth. What I haven’t decided yet is whether to also do Spanish and English (and possibly French!!) translations of the business posts on the main domain.

I know my English is not perfect and hope my readers may forgive me. The truth is I’m glad to have the opportunity to communicate with smart people from all over the world thanks to English.

Actually the only difference is that animals are slaughtered not vegetables. It isn’t really that dramatic a difference unless you belong to PETA.

Part of the issue I feel is that the Web seems very English-centric, although I might be blinkered because of my preferred language. Indeed English is for the time being the global Lingua Franca.
Blogging software (and urls,– oh for human intelligible extended characters!) are essentially English despite the large efforts of translation teams.

Rather than a monolingual blog maybe a bilingual blog is more achievable. Although potentially twice the work.

A possible solution is to twin your blog with someone who blogs about similar areas in your target language. Then you could proofread each others second language posts. And expand each others readership in the process.
Maybe bilingualism lessens the risk of rejection in your own community although I wonder if that is a real risk. I suppose if you blog exclusively in another language you are adopting that culture. Do you make your own communities independent of physical location and birth culture when the Web becomes a primary mode of expression?

My main blog has some bilingual aspects as it’s about my language learning efforts but I mainly confine my 2nd language attempts to a Japanese social network site called mixi, where my main reason is language acquisition and practice rather than blogging. (My audience is tiny there as well, but very sympathetic to my efforts). It is a huge effort to blog in a second language especially when you aren’t proficient in it.

When reading non-native English I’m fairly forgiving I think. I appreciate the large effort needed to learn English and am very glad of their efforts to accommodate me.

The main problem, I think, is the topics! If you are into blogging, blogs, web 2.0, and all the fancy stuff out there, you automatically have a need to write in English. Take my homecountry for example: You can find information about services like flickr, tumblr, general news about blogs and so on now – and it’s November 2007! So there is a problem with writing in your own language, because sometimes the English-language-world is already far away from specific topics when other languages arrive there.

Here is my point: I have been trying to blog in German and English.

In general, I decide the language, either German or English, considering the audience I want to reach out. Having that in mind, I make the right decision, because various topics address to a rather international level.

Sometimes, I do compare German and English sayings. So here I provide both, German and English speakers, with information that is fairly interesting for both sides.

Finally, I wouldn’t say that it should be up to the blogger what language they use for their entries. I like your approach and I will most definitely consider it. I might even blog about it. What language, oh I don’t know yet.

However I took the risk and found out that writing can actually be fun. Gil was my advisor in technical details and he will always remember how he turned a reluctant writer to a successful blogger.

In addition of this puzzling hobby I have continued my post master studies in mathematics and the language of advanced courses is also English. Both of these worlds contain very many words which have never been translated to Finnish.

I think that people accept my errors knowing my background. It would be much worse blogging in Finnish. There are very few people who can write without making mistakes even with their native language and those mistakes are considered unforgivable. This is causing me constant distress; you are judged very hard when using bad Finnish but speaking rubbish concerning mathematics is totally understandable!

The culture between Israel and Finland is huge. The Israeli people are very friendly and polite. The Finnish habit is mostly criticising. People would not comment on blogs thanking for good stories but when they would disagree with me the comments could be very rude.

I also blog in Finnish to my students but writing in Finnish is very much harder than using English. I don’t even expect any other people than my students to read that blog and thus I don’t have to worry so much about the attraction of the blog.

Finland has the population of 5.2 million people and too few of them are interested in Japanese puzzles, not to mention mathematics. My only chance to interact with people with the same interests is using English.

While initially it would seem that “It’s easier to blog in your own language” I am currently experiencing it is not that easy. I recently blogged about a Dutch publication on New Media Culture in the Netherlands and I was struggling to find the right words in my native language.

I was recently asked to guest blog on a Dutch blog which I am really looking forward to, but blogging in Dutch feels so odd. I am still discovering my personal blogging voice in English but I haven’t had any practice in Dutch yet.

I feel the same way as Thord about blogging in a different language than my native language. I feel rather comfortable writing in English but odd translations and/or errors might slip in now and then. I also hope that my readers will understand and help me by pointing out mistakes. I once received an email from a reader that pointed out a mistake, I thought that was really thoughtful and helpful.

It’s an interesting topic, I can’t wait to hear what others have to say about it.