Language in the Forum

[Gammalerik]

Hi

I find it quite troublesome that the forum has so many topics written in different languages. People are missing out on so much information, and are not able to join discussions with their valuable input.

I have no problem with different languages about topics directly concerning that particular country. There are dedicated forum sections for that. But when concerning general topics the network suffers from not being able to receive input. People today in 2012 are able to express themselves in English, are they not? I am from Norway myself, but if I were to post topics in Norwegian I must not expect much help either. I think the moderator should be more offensive in asking people to post in English in general forum sections.

-Please

[gynta]

:shock:
these three languages are in their own separate areas. whats the problem?

[Gammalerik]

Read my post again. I just do not see the point in having three separate forums UNLESS the topics are directly related to THAT SPECIFIC country's maps, geocaching etc.

Why post GENERAL topics that interest EVERYONE in i.e a German section? This just makes people miss out on vital info and are also not being able to contribute. The community loses a lot of potential from this. I cannot see why this is hard to understand.

[gynta]

Perhaps other people understand not good enough other languages?
Like me :roll:
Do you want to exclude these people?

[Menion]

I understand with Gammalerik in way, that for sure some people if know English at least a little, rather write to German or English topic. Only problem what I see, is fact then in case of German topic I cannot quickly help even if solution should be easy. So I just think, that instead of wasting time with some questions, you should suggest them post question in English part or notify me about such topic ...

some better separation is not simply possible I think, even if I understand both of you ...

[berkley]

I understand both arguments...

But honestly, there are people, which even can't express theirselves in their native language.
Being privileged enough for speaking, reading and writing more than one language doesn't make oneself smarter than the rest.

In addition to that:
I've only got access to the statistics for the map tweak. 33% of people are using it in Czech or German. Only 13% are using it in English (UK & USA). I know, this is not Locus, but i guess it is a pretty good refraction for users of Locus. This brings up the question, which main language should be used in the Forum? My answer is "English", of course.

To make some suggestions to improve the situation:
- Menion, is it possible to add a dialog "Do you really want to post in german/czech forum? Not everybody can understand your question." before someone makes a new post in german/czech forum?
- Native german/czech speakers, readers, writers should encourage the users to try to write in international section, even if their post is translated with google or bing!
- Posts in german/czech forum could contain an english summary each 5 or 10 posts. (Yes, someone will have to do this)

What do you all think of this?

Cheers, berkley

[pmoravec]

I understand both arguments...
- Native german/czech speakers, readers, writers should encourage the users to try to write in international section, even if their post is translated with google or bing!
- Posts in german/czech forum could contain an english summary each 5 or 10 posts. (Yes, someone will have to do this)

What do you all think of this?

Cheers, berkley

Hi all,
the problem is sometimes with the Czech->English->Czech translation so that's why Czech people who now that Menion is developing Locus here write ideas/bug reports directly.  Some of them would also have horrible English, but I agree that general issues should be probably written in English and you would not belive some things the google translation produces between these two languages (especially EN->CZ).

On the other hand, this is already done on the getSatisfaction, where the issues are reported in English. I for one have decided to send some bug reports/issues to menion in Czech via PM instead of the forum in past to not complicate this, but overall I don't think that reducing the Czech forums is going to happen by the users.

Also many people are lazy/would find it limiting to create even the 10-word annotation and who would write the summaries?

[berkley]

Is this the way, we should handle non-english topics:
https://getsatisfaction.com/locus/topic ... lizenziert

Just an example, but needs double the time to answer...

[Menion]

nice Matthias but little bit too much work . I think that GetSatisfaction should keep to be in English. When someone will have troubles with it, he should write us email (where we response that we speak only English or Czech ) ) or at least use something like "[DE] bla bla bla" ... then will be clear that topic is not in English

or he may report issue or question here. As wrote Pavel above, forcing people to same language is not solution when they don't have another choice and also that Google translation is really really terrible in most cases

[snow922]

you can not ask all the people from the different countries to speak the same language, so simple! If you do not know it you make the google translation.