Do tag clouds translate? 15 Dec 2006

Rex Wong examines whether Tag Clouds work for Chinese users:

"Tag clouds display tags in a website which emphasize some of the tags by showing them with larger font sizes, and/or in darker colors. Moreover, tags in a tag cloud are usually arranged in alphabetical order. Tag cloud seems to work in the English world as a means of visualization as well as an extra means of navigation - what about in the Chinese world or more specifically, what about in Hong Kong?"

It seems that there are a few problems. Firstly, alphabetical sorting doesn't work for Chinese characters. Secondly, Chinese characters set in different font sizes look strange or, at best, amateurish. And thirdly, most Chinese websites (especially those targeting Hong Kong and Taiwan) would need to display both Chinese and English tags, creating presentation issues. Something to bear in mind if you're designing Web 2.0 apps for a multi-national audience.