Developing multilingual academic websites: A study of Chinese university web design for the Chinese and the English versions

Two studies were conducted to investigate the creation processes and design characteristics of multilingual academic websites in Mainland China and Taiwan. Study One analyzed 45 Chinese university websites (15 from Taiwan, 30 from the Mainland) by comparing the design features of the Chinese version of a website with its English version. Strong differences were found in page layout, graphics design, indexing categories and labels, the availability of authority stamps, navigation tools, and search facilities. The data suggested that a majority of the universities in both locations hold a design bias toward their Chinese version, as a greater number of advanced technical elements and some viable content components were included in the Chinese pages but were missing from their English counterparts. Study Two involved surveying webmasters from 23 Chinese universities (9 from Taiwan, 14 from the Mainland) on website development, and conducting follow-up phone interviews with six survey respondents. Respondents and interviewees described their website construction process and their views on design differences in multiple language versions. The results showed that, although most of the webmasters believed that different language versions should have different content foci and presentation styles, there is no consensus on what exactly the differences should be. The paper concludes with a call for a proper design model of multilingual websites.