Original text - English - Happy new year 2006!

Happy new year 2006 to all cucumis.org visitors

What has changed since the last news entry?

- Cucumis.org has grown fast as there are now more than 1900 members and about 20 new members a day. Many new languages have been added to the cucumis.org interface: Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, and Brazilian Portuguese. A big thanks to the cucumis.org members who translated it.

- The project section is up and running but nobody knows how it works . It's mainly dedicated to webmasters who want to translate their websites. They can submit their text to be translated on cucumis.org and invite their visitors to translate on cucumis.org. Cucumis.org will get new members and the webmasters will be able to use the translation engine of cucumis.org and the expertise of cucumis.org members.

- An affiliation program has been developed to reward those who put a link on their personal websites or blogs to talk about cucumis.org. Instead of using the http://www.cucumis.org/ classic url, you can use this url: [linkid=w_in_[userid]]. Each translation done by a member you sent to cucumis.org through this url will earn you additional points (5 percent of the translation cost). There is also a similar affiliation link for the webmasters who manage a project on cucumis.org, to invite their visitors to translate their website on cucumis.org, with the same advantages: https://www.cucumis.org/translation_1_w/p_in_myProjectId.html.

- The multi-language Babylon dictionary has been inserted on the translation pages at the bottom of the side menu. It's a very useful tool and it's not intrusive at all.

- The wiki engine has been set. Some parts of the cucumis.org interface, as well as details and tutorials about how the website should be used, are now embedded in wiki articles. Wiki articles are more flexible than the language files of the cucumis.org interface, as they can be edited at any time by any member. The wiki articles of the cucumis.org interface can also be translated from the translation homepage using the link "List of [wiki] translations to be done or updated".

- It's now possible to post comments on all parts of the website, including news and wiki articles.

What's next?

- A language course section is currently under development. Each member of cucumis.org will be able to create a wiki lesson about his favorite language.

- A java applet is under development to offer the possibility to record and play back audio samples for the language courses.

- A java or flash applet will be developed to draw illustrations for the language courses.

- I don't understand why the ratio of members having done at least one translation is so small... Maybe I should try to improve the interface and I need your feed back on this...