04.10.12

The Sunrise/Sunset Onebox, Now in Many Languages

Posted in personal at 12:14 pm by danvk

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about launching the Sunrise/Sunset Onebox, which tells you when the sun will rise or set in any location.

You trigger it in English by search for [sunset nyc] or even just [sunset] to get times for your current location.

Over the weekend, I launched the onebox in 30+ new languages. It’s pretty cool to see your work in a language that you don’t understand. Here are a few examples:

Arabic: [غروب الشمس في المدينة المنورة] = [sunset in medina]

Onebox triggering for [sunset in medina] in Arabic

Or in Vietnamese: [mặt trời mọc Hà Nội] = [sunrise in Hanoi]

Onebox triggering for "sunset in hanoi"

Or in French: [coucher de soleil paris] = [sunset paris]

Onebox trigger for sunset in paris

The translated onebox is proving particularly popular in Arabic-speaking countries, where the sunrise is important for prayer times. It will be interesting to see whether there’s a spike in Hebrew queries on Friday, when Israel observes the sabbath beginning at sundown.

This launch has been more of a slog than I ever would have expected, so it’s gratifying to see it out there in the wild, being used. The world’s languages are a baffling mix of left-to-right and right-to-left. Arabic gets a special shout-out here for its plural forms. It has different word endings for quantities of 1, 2-10 and 11+!