Language selection on home page vs single language with link to the other -- opinions

I would appreciate any opinions on this.

I am building a site for my company which deals in foreign trade consultancy in Turkey. The aim of the site is:

1. to provide visitors (mainly foreign) demands and supplies of our clients,
2. to provide demands and offers of our overseas associates to both Turkish and foreign visitors,
3. to introduce our services to mainly Turkish companies

That said, the target audience is both Turkish (especially SME's who have difficulties in language and access to foreign markets) and other nationals engaged in foreign trade. Obviously the site will be on both languages depending on users choice.

My dilemma is, whether I should make a home page with two columns, one in English and one in Turkish and have the user to make their choice of language on the home page, or to have the home page in one single language (English would be my choice considering SEO) with a link to the other.

Some pros and cons I can think of (I'm not sure of any of them):

- Having introductory text in two languages on home page can distract the first time visitor and also limit the home page navigation to only two links to the main pages of the desired language (of course unles I overcrowd the page with links to content pages of both languages).
- Having two languages on home page could (I'm not sure) rank my page in search engines when searched in Turkish
- With two languages on home page, I have an opportunity to grab user browser and window size details via javascript and whether or not javasript is enabled as the page uses a form and these can be passed to the next page to evaluate them (I'm coding in classic ASP).
- Having an English home page with all links to English content and a link as "Turkish" could pose a negative impact on my Turkish clients.
- Having an English home page with links to the content of the site (which I cannot give with the two column choice) would enable search engine spiders to go deep in site.
- Having a single language page strictly defines your audience. I've been to such sites, Russian or Chinese on home page and went back without searching for the link for English.

These are my pros and cons. I'd love to hear your thoughts -- from the useability and IA pros, but especially from novoices

Many thanks in advance.

Celal
cozt@nova-trade.com

Its common to see an intro page (like a splash page) with language selection... generally two columns with either side printed in the language desired...

So long as you don't mind totally reproducing the site in either language, I think this is the least distracting for someone who doesn't understand the other language.

I know if I visit a site and the first thing I see is a paragraph written in a language I can't read, I'll press the back button and find another site; I'll assume I can't read the whole site, and thus stop reading.

Many thanks for your feedback. What would you think about the search engine behaviour on such a home page with two languages?

in regards to the search engine behaviour...
are you referring to Google's translator?

I just noticed the Developer Shed network (Devarticles included) now supports automatic page translation...

My one concern is, if you're going to offer your information in many languages, you should be willing to offer support in many languages... for example, if you're operating a retail website in spanish, german, and english... but everyone on your staff only speaks/reads/types english... multiple languages are a waste...

theo, just to clarify what I originally meant by two columns... I think the intro splash page should offer the choice of either one language OR the other... i mis-used the word columns... I couldn't agree more with the fact that no one should be reading a page which on one side has on language, and the other side a different language.

[after reading my original post, i realize what i said]

when you say homepage, I consider splash page... similar to http://www.guanoapes.com/ (a band's homepage)

To theo: That was my major concern -- about distracting visitors attention and wasting space. Maybe very short 1 or 2 sentences intro in 2 languages and selection of language would be enough. Also, my question only refers to index page - not all pages of the site. Thanks for the addition.

To MadCowDZZ: The site is only in two languages: Turkish and English. Turkish section for local users and English for others.

What I meant by search engine behavior was if the ranking would be better on home page than deeper pages. I wouldn't think so...

Thanks again for the feedback

Celal

oohhh... of course... Search engine behaviour
Sorry, I should have realized that =)

Many search engines spider the entire site, so I guess if you have the bulk of your information on the second page it wouldn't matter as much... Search Engine Optimization isn't my strongpoint... but perhaps if you were to visit www.seochat.com (a DevShed network member), you could find some information there...