Topic: Automatic translation of the french forums?

[okepc]

In my opinion its not wise to split the forums into two languages.
There are more people that can read english.
This way solutions for problems are split and lots of people that can't read french are missing these discussions.

No offence meant for the french people....

Maybe the site can be rewritten in french so there are two portals, but keep
the forums in english.

Just my 2 cts

Dirk

p.s. my french is terrible

[guest22]

Hi Dirk,

The French community is very happy with the French forum, and there will be more different languages.

It's a global project and although the main language of contribs.org is English, not everybody can speak, read ow write English.

However, we did ask our French friends to post 'important' news on the English forums so that the searchengine can pick it up and you won't miss a thing

RequestedDeletion

[sudemo]

RequestedDeletion

I am the same opinion than Dirk because if you will have all different language on this forum it will be in the future very complex.
Why not have on contribs.org only english and find for the other languages a local forum.

If you will handle here all different languages you are busy 24 hours a day and how you will control that there is only legal content on it.

Just my opinion.

Martin

[Boris]

If you will handle here all different languages you are busy 24 hours a day and how you will control that there is only legal content on it.

By delegating administration of the forums to French (and other  langs) speaking moderators (like its done now).

I agree that is frustrating to see posts on the different language and not being able to read them, but hopefully readers of those forums will be courteous enough to us to translate the interested ones.

[mocco]

No offence meant for the french people....

This is a very REAL issue people.There needs to be a
solution put in place to translate the forum into your given language. I have found answers to questions on French sites that were never posted on the English sites.
The community as a whole is missing out if we segment off into different languages. Anyone remember the Tower of Babel?

Google has a medium to translate some searches. Anyway this could be incorporated into the Contribs.org forum?

Just my 2 Cents

[grand-pa]

Why not have on contribs.org only english and find for the other languages a local forum.

If i well understand, you are not against non-english forums, but only against non-english forums on contribs.org. What does that really mean ? I hope you don't think contribs.org should only be used by english-speaking people...
All over the world some people don't speak english (it's not always the first foreign language learned at school). Can't they contribute in any way for that reason ?

FYI, there are yet two 100% french forums available (a newsgroup with 14800 messages and a web-forum with 9500 messages) but some of the active french community asked contribs.org to have their own forum here. Why ?
Simply because everyone who wants to see SME live forever has to join the international contribs Community here, english or non english speaking.
The more contributors, the livest (is that good english ? ) will be SME.

I agree that is frustrating to see posts on the different language and not being able to read them, but hopefully readers of those forums will be courteous enough to us to translate the interested ones.

For the moment, all messages are simple help to users (often yet asked and answered in english forums), nothing really interresting for the Community.
And if anybody find an interresting french message he doesn't understand, ask us to translate : it would be a pleasure.

Well, it's my point of vue and i hope it doesn't hurt anyone in anyway.

(hopping i didn't make too much mistakes )

[grand-pa]

The community as a whole is missing out if we segment off into different languages.

Remember that if there isn't any translation, non-english-speaking people simply can't use and contribute to english-only softwares/forums.

I know that segmenting will hide some informations to many people. But at least, the information will exist and it will always be possible to find a translator.
If non-english-speaking people can't use contribs.org/SME, there is no contribution at all from them !

Since SME has been translated to french, a lot french people use SME and some very good contributions have been developped. I'm sure it could be the same with the most représentative languages in the world (spanish, portuguese, german, italian and may be arabic, chinese and japanese if it is possible with there specific caracter coding ; sorry if i forget some other languages).

[mocco]

Remember that if there isn't any translation, non-english-speaking people simply can't use and contribute to english-only softwares/forums.

You may be missing my point. AFAIK all languages are welcomed.What I am suggesting is some method of translating a post into whatever language by simply cutting and pasting or some other Quick and easy method.Does anyone know of such a program that could be utilized so if someonee sees a (for example)Fench HOWTO for Backup2ws they can translated into English,Spanish or whatever.

[sudemo]

If i well understand, you are not against non-english forums, but only against non-english forums on contribs.org. What does that really mean ? I hope you don't think contribs.org should only be used by english-speaking people...
All over the world some people don't speak english (it's not always the first foreign language learned at school). Can't they contribute in any way for that reason ?

Did you realy read this in my posting ? than my english is worse than yours.  

What I mean is not what you think I said.  

In my opinion it makes no sence to have in the Forum all kind of languages and the rest of the contrib.org page can´t read than from this visitors.
How much languages you will show in here ?

Therefor I just say to keep the Forums already existing in the different countries and may promote it on the contribs.org site because only there you can provide everything in the language of this country.

I like also to compare it with the Tower of Babel because earlier or later you get problems with all this kind of different languages on one site.

So please make also a german area because also my english is horrible.  

I have much more arguments not to do this language mix but in the end it is the decision of the contribs.org team.

I personally can live with any decision and belive me, I have nothing against french.
France is very close to there where I live and I like this country.

Martin

[smeghead]

.. I even use the French forum as a brain test to dredge up my old school French and put it to the test (usually I fail miserably but its fun trying, mais non mon ami!)

[MSmith]

I suspect the French SME community has come up with some good solutions for some of the worldwide SME community's needs ... I for one will be quite pleased when *all* contribs in *any* language are translated and made more readily available on contribs.org.

[Boost]

Hello everybody...

First, excuse me for my english... I'm french and my english is not perfect...  

My point of vue is that a french forum is not a bad idea...In fact, i understand a little English but if it's technical, i dont understand this... (it's clear ?   )

Grand Pa says :
Since SME has been translated to french, a lot french people use SME and some very good contributions have been developped. I'm sure it could be the same with the most représentative languages in the world (spanish, portuguese, german, italian and may be arabic, chinese and japanese if it is possible with there specific caracter coding ; sorry if i forget some other languages).

I'm Ok with this... I use SME on my server since it's in French and before, i used only systems which work in French because it's too difficult for configure correctly if you dont talk English...

I hope that everyone understand me...

(It's just my point of vue )

Chris (often on Ixus.net)

[milou]

The fact is that outside of the Anglo-Saxon world, nobody speaks English.

The French forum is an excellent idea, and it gives French speaking people a place to post questions and get answers.

I am sorry if you do not read French enough to understand all the posts, but now there are talks about a Spanish forum, etc...

SME itself is available in French and in English, including all the documentation, thanks to the Mitel crew in Ottawa. For once that the ROC (Rest Of Canada) embraces something French, I give them a big applause, and a thumb up.

Diversity in culture is what is interesting in life. You can't eat burger with ketchup everyday without getting bored to death...

Cheers.

Elvis Gratton

[jcoleman]

Here is our position on multiple languages on contribs.org.

1 - All people are welcome here regardless of what language they speak.

2 - While I speak only English myself, I am not so arrogant as to think it is the only language with value

3 - The French speaking community came to us with significant traffic and volunteer moderators to make sure it was handled correctly

4 - If there is a similar demand and volunteers for other languages we will gladly consider adding them to contribs

5 - If there were an easy to implement method of auto-translating these forum posts into Egnlish we will be glad to implement.  Please try and add potential solutions when asking for services.  We're happy to look at them

6 - Whether you can understand another language or not, we will not refuse any significant user community access to our site.

There is absolutely no value in suggesting that if a forum is in another language then it should not be on contribs.  If you don't want to look at these posts, simply don't go into that forum.  Asking for them to be removed so that they are not "seen" on contribs is just ridiculous.

I personally feel that it is "my" limitation that I can only speak English.  I certainly don't want anyone else to suffer from my deficiencies.

I suggest that all of us "English only" folks consider the real demographics of the world and allow for the fact that while English is a common language for technical subjects, it is certainly not the only one.

Thanks to all for participating and many thanks to those who have offered to translate.

Cheers,

-jeff