When I got access to the multi-language audio on all my YouTube channels, I thought I’d finally be able to start posting videos in English and Portuguese on the same channel. But when I tried the feature, I quickly realized that dubbing the videos with my voice would be much harder than recording two full videos in both languages. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about how cool that would be, and maybe that’s what triggered another idea, a ‘why not?’ moment.

Embracing the Mess

I currently have two separate blogs mainly because of the mess categories or tags create when I use the same blog to write in both languages. For example, if you filter the posts by “obsidian”, the list will contain articles in both languages. I ended up opting for two separate blogs because I’m not a developer and have no intentions of having a complex multi-language site. Furthermore, I enjoy the simplicity and social integrations Micro.blog has.

But what if I embrace the mess? And by “I”, I mean you! 😂

The Tiny Theme, which is what I use on my blog, has a Microhook for the navigation menu, meaning I can set it up however I want. My idea was to use PT and EN categories for the posts and use those to create separate menus for the pages and a timeline in each language.

After a few hours of going back and forth with Gemini, we came up with a pretty cool solution to switch from one language to the other. But since all other categories are basically the same in both languages, there will be no separation in the list of posts if a category filter is used.

It’s a bit messy, but it’s also how my brain works. This post in particular will probably be translated because it’s an explanation of what’s happening to the blog, but my posts are rarely translated. Sometimes I feel like writing in English; other times, I prefer Portuguese.

Merging the Socials

Anyway, since I’m doing this with the blog, I also decided it would be a good idea to unify my social media accounts as well. Currently I have two Mastodon and two Bluesky accounts, and that’s a lot of work. So, expect posts in both languages there as well.

Oh, you can also expect missing menus, pages, and posts while I merge everything into a single blog.

This is just the latest chapter in my two-blog problem that’s been haunting me since forever.

Welcome to the newly merged (and slightly chaotic) blog!