Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 16:13:53 11/08/01
For the most part, I think that everyone pretty much agrees that English is working well as an "Esperanto that acutally works." The problem comes along when someone does not understand English at all, or so poorly that they feel unable to communicate. Now, in a case like this, we have several options. We could use a translation service, and transfer from our Native language to English. The problem with that approach is shown in this earlier post that I made: http://www.icdchess.com/forums/1/message.shtml?196383 If you read that, you will find that some of the translators were acceptable (even getting the idioms right) and others commically horrible. If you don't know English very well, and you translate into English, you might get something laughably awful. In such a case, we would be much better off trying a translator ourselves, since we can usually tell when the translation is correct by reading its guess (but not always, of course). I suggest that the following approach be used for posting here: 1. If you are comfortable in English, then use that language. 2. If you have difficulty with English, then we could have a thing like the [MOD] to mark the message as different. Maybe a [TRANSLATE] request could be added to the top. Then, if someone decides to be helpful, we can get a translation into English. I imagine what it would be like if I had to post in French or Turkish. I have some familiarity with both of those langauges (having taken a year of French both in high school and college, and having lived in Turkey for 2 years). But if I had to converse in those languages it would be very, very difficult for me. I could probably do it, but it would really curtail my communication. If I had to post in German or Finnish (where I only know a few vocabulary terms and swear words) it would be pretty hopeless. So, I think we should be encouraging, even of those who are not comfortable in English. And if someone puts a [TRANSLATE] on the front of a subject, maybe we can give it a go if we happen to know the original language of the post.
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