arwen1968 1:55 pm on March 22, 2017

Italics or Blue?

Hello lovely people!

Just looking for some advice regarding how to present bilingual posts – after some experimenting I’ve come to the decision that alternating chunks of text is the best (the page jumps didn’t work for e-mail followers). I now got two formats that I tried and I’d like some opinions which one is easier to follow?

The first method I used was to differentiate the second language by putting the paragraphs in italics like in this post:

Rest in Peace? The Wandering Remains of Christopher Columbus

But because my theme puts quotes in italics and I sometimes use italics in a text anyway, I thought that maybe putting the second language in a different colour might be better. Like this post:

The Siege (El asedio)

In which format is it easier to follow the text for a monolingual reader?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Suze 3:03 pm on March 24, 2017

I really liked the first style with the changing colors of text. It made it easier for me to attempt a translation of a language I do not know by comparison between the colors.
- arwen1968 4:08 pm on March 24, 2017
  
  Thank you for taking a look Suze. It seems most people agree that colour is better… The trouble is somebody pointed out that in the Reader the colours don’t work… argh! Where does that leave me?! Whether I do page jumps, alternate colours or whatever, in one format or other it just doesn’t work! Maybe I should give up trying to run a (partially) bilingual blog?
  - Suze 4:17 pm on March 24, 2017
    
    what about…changing the font? Make it as simple as you can. I wouldn’t forget about doing it, it is a fantastic idea and I am sure other’s would appreciate it.
    - arwen1968 4:20 pm on March 24, 2017
      
      That’s not a bad idea… I have to see what the theme allows me to do. It’s only a free theme but I do like it.
      - Suze 4:24 pm on March 24, 2017
        
        you should have about fifty different fonts in each free design. I have 67 in mine and it’s a free one. don’t change your theme over this. I love your theme
        
        arwen1968 5:08 pm on March 24, 2017
        
        I stole the idea of black-white-red from a website for a book whose author was trying to gather sufficient crowdfunding to be published. Eventually the book was published and I interviewed the author (my first ever and so far only author interview):
        Spain from the Bar: Interview with Joan Planas
        There’s a link at the end to the website but he changed it since so it’s not quite like what it was when it inspired me: then it was all black font on plain white background, with some red and grey thrown in and stunning black-and-white photographs. Very uncluttered, very clean and with a huge impact. At least in my opinion.