I’m wondering, would it be a good idea to create some separate forum categories for French, German and Spanish?
Obviously everyone is free to post anywhere in the forum, but I’m wondering if none English speaking members would feel more comfortable posting in their own language in a place others will easily find.
At the same time I don’t want to create divides, my intentions here are for positive effect, however as I only speak English, I don’t feel it’s my place to make this call.
So please help by casting a vote or comments below.
IMO, since Blocs will soon be available in these languages along with translated support documentation it more than make sense to have some language options within the forum.
IInitially, I didn’t see the added value of having (part of) the forum in different languages. Personally, being a native Dutch speaker, I would not be interested in a separate Dutch group. The reason is I left Holland 15 years ago and have lived in several countries after. However, after some thought, it actually could make sense as there’s a reason for translating Blocs in other languages. This will attract to the forum more foreign-language speakers who potentially could have less knowledge of the English language.
I think all threads should stay the same so we can all follow and not to lose direction of how the forum flows, at the moment its structure is great - And I totally agree that people want to post a reply in their spoken language then this is great and please do so - and we just click translate or whatever language people want this to be.
I believe we live in an amazing multi cultural world where we all should mix - and I believe this should be the same for a forum and not bring in separation in groups.
Let’s be as one - and hope the powers in the forum and online translation tools and @Norm’s skills that we can add a simple translate button under posts. I am more favour of this
Amazon do this - and do this well. if the forum stays as it is in structure, and then we can use the language switcher on posts in non English sat underneath? or a choice of Translate to Country of the users choice?
Sure many on page/site solutions exist whatever best fits your requirements. For users to continue to learn and share from each other something will be required if multiple languages are in place. Facilitating that open aspect of the forum is very important while also allowing ease of use for those with various language barriers.
I checked the pricing for Google API calls, it’s not too bad, I’m just concerned for bots hammering the forum. There is a limit of 3 translations a minute (I assume per account) which may help.
Maybe I need to get it installed trial it for a few months and then see what the costs are
I speak several languages almost fluently and yet when it comes to technical discussions I always feel (even not being a EN native) that EN is the way to go
Why?
Because I have those terms internalized and so does the web and most of the “behind the scenes” logic
Just a example - perhaps silly but it should illustrate the issue - the word “computer” is English, if I am to write this in proper German I’d have to use something like “Elektronische Datenverarbeitungsanlage”
YES, that’s silly, everyone will use “computer” instead
But the same happens with so many other things that I (for example when I have German clients) ask for English communication (if possible) when outlining the project and talking technical things.
Too fast a translation will lead to issues and it can get real hard even typing out the things.
One really gets used to using English terms for things and also explaining things without the need of constantly checking word casing and so on.
Another thing is that information gets sort of duplicated without the possibility for all people to understand it (for example an issue may be solved in German but the English speaker won’t understand it more often than the opposite)
I consider English the “lingua franca” of technology.
That said, i understand not everyone is confident in English and if there will be a non-English forum I’ll be happy to help out, I’m native German speaker and fluent in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, so I could certainly interact in those forums.
Off topic here - but just something I would like to say as I think it’s brilliant how so many of our forum users talk more than one language…and the pattern is - they are not from the UK!
Growing up in a family of mixed spoken languages and it’s the same with my Mum as she from Mauritius is that it seems so many people abroad talk 1 or more extra languages, and everyone from the UK just talk English!!, in fact, nearly all my friends and family abroad talk 2 or more (My Mum used to talk 4!!!) and I do not know anyone born in the UK who talks any other languages fluently. I know some french and creole from my Mum!
We tend to get more engrossed in accents here, Black Country, Liverpudlian, Geordie accents…all different and great!
Is this because in the UK we already talk the most spoke language in the world…or we just too damn lazy!!!
I also like to see the forum only in english, so many things you simply cant translate, left, right, up and down is easy to translate, but software code does not make sense to translate. The good thing of ONE forum is that there is ONE place to check and search. Like we all do this when we wake up, we check the forum for something new ( at least I do ) so maybe later I have the check the English, Dutch and German forum to stay up to date.
The forum is there for everyone anyway. If someone wants to ask a question in their native language, they can do so anyway, so, I think there is no need to divide the forum into separate language sections. That just makes it harder to keep up with it all.
I used to live in Italy and for a while I worked with Photoshop in Italian, but when dealing with international clients I felt pretty silly when I didn’t know the relevant words in English.
Later on it was actually an Italian web designer that told me he always used English language software because the code, technical support and app updates makes it the only logical choice.
) so maybe later I have the check the English, Dutch and German forum to stay up to date.
