e49 adds Persian language to website

Monday, December 11, 2006

In March 2006, the International Journalist Network contracted the Bivings Group (TBG) and episode49 to build a multi-lingual website to include English, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese. By following their proven business and database architecture models, episode49 established core tools to assist IJN in tracking media training and other assistance efforts in more than 150 countries.

The purpose of the site was to complement media assistance efforts with online member interaction for a global, interactive network to further promote journalism everywhere.

"The IJN project proved to be very challenging at times," said Ken Smith, managing partner of episode49, "but the big picture is that a Chattanooga based firm is providing solutions that are utilized globally with the highest concentration coming from outside of the United States."

This month, the IJN awarded an additional contract to (TBG) and episode49 to include the Persian (Farsi) language. The site already included a fully customized content management system and dynamic switching from language to language. However, the Persian (Farsi) language required a new twist to the layout of the site.

Unlike the other site languages, Arabic and Persian (Farsi) is read from right to left. As a result, this required a complete site transformation to switch the layout of the site to a right to left read format. This challenge was met with not only the text based content, but also all the images on the website. The existing Content Management System (CMS) that already allowed all site content to be edited in four languages, was extended to now support Persian (Farsi) as well.

The original site from March 2006 was constructed as a scalable solution utilizing a powerful database design and flexible .NET architecture, thus making it a smooth transition to include the additional language. This type of architecture also enabled officials from the IJN to take a step by step approach to providing the content translations.