Keeping it Simple

1
Keeping it Simple!

• World Bank Multilingual Web Program
• By Zeina Afif

2
Today

• Corporate sites in Arabic, French, Chinese,
  Russian and Spanish
• Over 250K monthly unique visitors
• 53 Country sites in 18 languages managed by the
  countries
• Main external Bank systems in French and Spanish
  (Arabic, Chinese and Russian by July 2007)

3
Our approach?

• We listened to stakeholders
• We kept it simple
• We showed results
• We stayed positive and persistent

4
Challenges we faced

• Funding
• Support
• Technology
• Building community
• Outreach
• Content selection
• Translation quality and style

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Building Community

• ISSUES
• Only corporate content in French
• Existing process too cumbersome
• Translation style and quality low
• Lack of initiative, resources and interest from
  the region and countries or so we thought

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Our Stakeholder

• Africa region
• Agreement with Africa team
• Country Office in Francophone Africa
• Pilot
• Management Support

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Step 1

• Piloted Senegal
• Involved top management
• Identified the obstacles and challenges
• Simplified the process
• Provided writing and style guidelines
• Made them our priority

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Step 2

• Identified existing French material
• Provided feedback on writing for the web
• Handled technology
• Developed with them a 6 month editorial calendar
• Marketed their content through Google keywords
  and French search engines
• Provided quarterly web stats and key milestones

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Step 3

• Showcased their results
• Trained them in using the content management
  system
• Used their successful story to get remaining
  francophone country staff on board

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Outcome?

• French Senegal website one of the top Africa
  country sites
• Interest and enthusiasm from all Africa country
  office staff and directors
• Within 6 month, worked with 9 country offices in
  launching their French country sites
• Recruited and trained a French web editor for the
  Africa region
• Using same model for other Arabic, Portuguese,
  Spanish country sites

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French WebsitesWhere are we now?

• Over 60K monthly unique visitors and growing
• 10 Africa country sites in French
• Material targeting Youth, Civil Society,
  Parliamentarians, Journalists

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Lessons learned?

• Identify the real obstacles to the smallest
  degree
• Get over the bureaucracy
• Provide resources and training
• Be genuinely supportive
• Share the praise and credit
• Give it your 100 effort