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Multi Lingual Forums
- Thread starter Ryan
- Start date
? You're forcing me to look in the announcements section practically every day to see if there were other new posts other than this...Shadow1980
Wanderer
I work for a large multilingual web marketing company and there are both advabtages as well as disadvantages with offering multilingual support.
The obvious advantage is that people who speak no english whatsoever can receive support, though this support will be limited.
This might attract some more users.
The disadvantages are a bit larger:
1. You will *need* one or more moderators for each and every language.
2. You will spread the community and decrease activity for the large bulk of users that DO speak English.
3. Dependant on how you arrange it, you will either have random languages throughout threads or have seperate forums for each language. The first is messy the second becomes annoying as you reduce the importance of current active forums.
4. You encourage people not to bother to learn English, which is a bad idea. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for anybody in the RunUO community to not learn English or to not want to learn English. The programming language it is written in is in English for crying out loud. In fact - any programmar should be capable of speaking English if he/she wants to be a competative factor in his/her market. (I am a programmer and I am not a native English speaker, so shush before you start to comment.)
Either way, despite being for multilungual support on shard themselve or in fact anywhere else on the internet where it is useful, I believe multilingual support here will do more damage then it will do good. Remember we are not providing support for players here, but for people who are interested in building/running a shard and creating scripts.
This is my advise, of course you are free to do (or don't) as you please.
The obvious advantage is that people who speak no english whatsoever can receive support, though this support will be limited.
This might attract some more users.
The disadvantages are a bit larger:
1. You will *need* one or more moderators for each and every language.
2. You will spread the community and decrease activity for the large bulk of users that DO speak English.
3. Dependant on how you arrange it, you will either have random languages throughout threads or have seperate forums for each language. The first is messy the second becomes annoying as you reduce the importance of current active forums.
4. You encourage people not to bother to learn English, which is a bad idea. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for anybody in the RunUO community to not learn English or to not want to learn English. The programming language it is written in is in English for crying out loud. In fact - any programmar should be capable of speaking English if he/she wants to be a competative factor in his/her market. (I am a programmer and I am not a native English speaker, so shush before you start to comment.)
Either way, despite being for multilungual support on shard themselve or in fact anywhere else on the internet where it is useful, I believe multilingual support here will do more damage then it will do good. Remember we are not providing support for players here, but for people who are interested in building/running a shard and creating scripts.
This is my advise, of course you are free to do (or don't) as you please.
WarAngel said:
I didn't mean something like Google translate (which I have used, but yes it requires re-writing what it spits out into real English)
I meant something more along the lines of the FFXI auto-translate. It lets you choose words or phrases out of a list, and then locally 'translates' those. More like the cliloc functions of the UO client, that a player can access. =)
Shadow1980
Wanderer
Alari said:
Such a thing is not feasible on forums. Not without it being years of work and making some sense. The only good translation is manual translation.
Consider some of the posts currently made by people who are not very proficient in English and multiply the hard time you have to understand their explanations by a factor of ten. You will then be close to the level of understanding from posts made by any auto-translator, predefined or otherwise.
Heh one thing I noticed is since a majority of the users here speak english in one form or another and many of the users from other countries are taught english as either a Primary or high secondary language in school, there should really be no need. If someone really needs a translation run a thread through babblefish or something. Google translation can be good some of the time but in most translators grammer isnt properly translated and since most people tend to use slang or abbreviations those don't get translated, so leave it as it is and the non-english speakers will just have to be a bit more patient with those of us who only speak english and are trying to figure out what the heck the stuff you typed is supposed to mean. I know there are people like Daat99 who speak atleast One other language, but I don't know how many others who are decent coders who are willing to translate. I think maybe also ArteGordon does occasionally as well... but anywayz. Just thought I'd make a comment.
I didn't think it would be feasable, just cool. ^.^
And yeah, I've used Google translate successfully on more than one script's documentation. It horribly mangles the script itself, usually beyond repair, but selective translation of the object names and such yields a useable translation. It takes some effort to turn what the auto-translators spit out into readable language, though it definitely takes less time than manually translating everything. =)
As far as general forum posts, multiple forums for different languages are probably the best solution to giving everyone a way to get support or be involved in a community without the inherent problems and ridicule that come when dealing with people who would rather say "speak my language" than try and understand what you wrote. The problem I feel arises from having multiple forums for different languages is that it splits the community. It becomes a(nother) dividing point for people who were originally brought together by one ideal - having their own UO server, talking with others who run servers, sharing code (whether giving or receiving), etc. Unfortunately I don't see any realistic way around that.
And yeah, I've used Google translate successfully on more than one script's documentation. It horribly mangles the script itself, usually beyond repair, but selective translation of the object names and such yields a useable translation. It takes some effort to turn what the auto-translators spit out into readable language, though it definitely takes less time than manually translating everything. =)
As far as general forum posts, multiple forums for different languages are probably the best solution to giving everyone a way to get support or be involved in a community without the inherent problems and ridicule that come when dealing with people who would rather say "speak my language" than try and understand what you wrote. The problem I feel arises from having multiple forums for different languages is that it splits the community. It becomes a(nother) dividing point for people who were originally brought together by one ideal - having their own UO server, talking with others who run servers, sharing code (whether giving or receiving), etc. Unfortunately I don't see any realistic way around that.