2026-07-21
Multilingual conference websites
International meetings often owe attendees more than an English brochure with a machine-translated footer. The hard part is keeping languages aligned with the live scientific record.
Not everything belongs in every language
Abstract titles may stay in the language of the science. Practical pages — venue, visas, registration categories — often need the host language. Decide that split in public, or volunteers will translate the programme twice and still miss a room change.
Live data is the usual failure
Static paragraphs are easy to translate once. Rates, deadlines and session times change. If each language is a separate CMS tree, one of them will be wrong. A conference website that publishes from operational records can switch language without cloning the timetable.
Language is not a theme colour
Switchers should name the language of the page you land on. Dates, currency and address formats follow locale. Accessibility means the HTML language attribute matches what the reader sees — including on Eventumbot’s own marketing site, which ships English, French, German and Spanish.
Who writes the second language
Software does not replace a translator for scientific claims or legal text. Organisers remain responsible for meaning. What the platform can do is stop a communications intern from retyping session titles into a second brochure the night before opening.