Localization Notes

The earthquake map page is composed of text from several sources. Some of these sources are easily localizable and others are not.

Local Text
The text I've written myself is localizable. Make a copy of the strings file, translate each of the string variables into your local language and then mail the file to me.
The Google Maps Application
If you have set up your native language as your browser's default language, Google Maps will detect this and deliver the user interface in your language if they support it. If not, ask me, and I can probably localize that too if you provide the translation.
Maps
Text in the maps themselves cannot be localized. Text such as city names is part of the jpeg image and unfortunately cannot be changed.
Info Windows
The text in the info window about each earthquake comes from the US Geological Survey RSS feed. At this point I don't have anything set up to localize this, and it seems like it would be fairly hard to do so since there are so many different locations. Let me know if you have any good ideas about this.
News Search
This is another Google service which will serve up content in your language if possible. To make this work I just need the right search term. I've already set this up for a few languages with the help of a web translator.
Ads
Once the rest of the page is localized Google says they'll detect this and serve ads in the correct language.

After your localized strings file has been installed, people using web browsers with that language set as the default will automatically see your translation instead of the original English page.

You can also view a translation by adding an 'hl' parameter set to a two letter language code, like this incomplete one for Spanish. <http://earthquakes.tafoni.net/?hl=es>.