Web Languages
Official United Methodist website expands language options. (Photo courtesy Canva.)
February 21, 2022
UMC.org, the website of The United Methodist Church, has now expanded its available language options to better meet the needs of a diverse, global and multilingual church with members around the world. The official site is now available in five languages: English, French, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.
With this expansion of language options, UMC.org seeks to communicate in the languages and cultural contexts of the church and provide easily accessible content in those languages.
Throughout 2021, the Member Communications Team increased production of content in Spanish, French, Korean and Portuguese. The team also developed processes to insure that homepages across the languages are relevant and present consistent messaging, no matter the language.
“The agency’s goal is to produce original content created by native speakers to provide relevant storytelling for the respective audiences,” said Joe Iovino, Director, Member Communications. “When content is originally produced in English, United Methodist Communications provides manual translations to accurately reflect context and give attention to cultural nuances.”
While some of the numbers are modest compared to the English-language site metrics, 2021 saw growing trends month by month in each of the four languages.
- UMC.org/ES, the Spanish edition of UMC.org increased views more than 470% over 2021.
- UMC.org/FR, the Francophone version, also saw a dramatic increase of almost 270% in sessions.
- UMC.org/KO, the Korean site, saw sessions nearly double.
- UMC.org/PT, the Portuguese version of the site, saw an increase of 85% in sessions.