[forum] Internationalization

Destry · 2015-09-25 07:39:55

I’m aware that we dropped the old internationalization forums, which I was in support of. But I’ve been noticing many instances of non-English speakers posting non-English posts in what many here now consider to be English-only boards. Here’s a tail end to a thread where such a situation recently happened…

colak wrote #295088:

…they were not getting the responses to the questions.

I’m not replying to Colak, but to everyone…

That was really the problem with the old international boards. They weren’t hard to maintain, per se, it’s just they were never used and it didn’t make sense to keep a long list of language forums that were mostly empty. I still stand by that.

That said, maybe we should be more flexible about letting people start new threads in a different language if they need to (i.e., they should use English if they can, but it’s okay not to if they can communicate easier in their native tongue). So instead of encouraging people to conform to English, we meet them half way with these two rules:

You can start a new thread in a non-English language.
You must reply in English to any thread started in English.

The onus of using Google Translate should be on everybody (I use it just about every day anyway), not just non-English writers. Fact is, it’s easier for people to read English than it is to write it. This is the pattern when learning any language. So allowing for language-dedicated threads among English threads seems like a fair compromise. We don’t have to personalize the UI (English if fine).

There are enough bilingual speakers in the community that someone should be able to address another language. If not, those people will have to make better efforts with English, but it will be more clear to them at that point what the problem is, that their language is underrepresented here (e.g., nobody speaks Klingon, I presume, so the questions in that language are ignored).

Allowing for this might even lead to an uptick in forum use via help contributions from those that don’t normally contribute. And we don’t all need to know what every single conversation is about anyway (I sure the hell don’t). Most of the time it’s the same stuff over and over again anyway, let someone’s countryperson or bilingual-capable whoever take care of it, or not. Of course, this has implications for non-English family sites doing a better job of stepping up to the challenge (textpattern.fr, textpattern.ru, textpattern.nl, whatever), but we have no control over that, thus we should be a little more accommodating in these casual boards for those in need.

Two cents.

Pyanepsion · 2015-09-25 07:52:40

Moderator’s annotation:
The following two posts were made in the topic Nom de l’image en clair that, however, sort of caused this one here, and so I moved them here.
– Uli –
_________________________________________

Original post:

From experience, I know that when software uses only the language of his country, it is often considered unacceptable by many users. They believe that somehow they are discredited. On the other hand, at least for France, the hearing Textpattern became very weak and I see on the major French SEO forums that this fact roughly corresponds to the time where Textpattern decided to remove the sub-forums in local language.

On the other hand, it is also true that the response in the local language is not assured, partly for the same reasons reversed as above, and also because that for computer science, the language used is often that of IBM, Microsoft, and Apple.

I propose a very simple suggestion to make which could give the impression in the forum that Textpattern is not a confidential software.

It would be enough to add, configurable in the choice of the user who chooses from a list, a flag icon just before the timestamp of the message. Imagine the immediate impact on users of the same country, for example with a Belgian user (I’m a French) who could see his country honored. As for those who not live in the country, it is only a simple information as well as the location.

In short, a little something like this:

Last edited by uli (2015-09-25 15:51:09)

uli · 2015-09-25 14:00:33

Pyanepsion, I’m sorry that you apparently were under the impression that my sentence “From here on in English, please use translate.google.com for translating” looked like I wouldn’t want you (and people in general) to post in their native language. I was speaking of myself, because I began the post in French but continued in English, and you would have to use Google Translate to read it (like I thought at that point).

What I silently implied, and I don’t want to deny that, was the plea to add a translation to your reply via the mentioned web service. By all means, continue to post in French, add a translation if you want to get a wide audience, or leave it at that. I’ll try to see whether I understand, regardless, and, if so, will reply in the language I speak second-best, English.

BTW, while you were writing, one of our moderators, Destry, opened a separate topic on internationalisation that you might be interested in. If you want me to transfer your post above mine over there, I’ll gladly do so :)

colak · 2015-09-25 14:21:16

Hi Destry,

I think that one of the reasons the ‘international’ forums were cancelled was because it was decided to use FluxBB with minimal mods. Namely by just adding textile and spam prevention filters.

If we are to add more languages, we will need to expand (as was the case before) to non european ones too. In such case I am not certain as to how easy it will be to solve the <html lang="en" dir="ltr"> problem without changing extensively the FluxBB code on a per forum, thread or post basis so as to make the forum truly multilingual.

Pyanepsion · 2015-09-25 14:40:20

If you want me to transfer “your post above

Yes, of course, if you wish.

you apparently were under the impression

No. I understand, Uli, the reasons and agree to them. However, I also know that when a software provides support only in one language, then some users will think that the software’s authors consider them irrelevant. Hence a simple proposition to achieve that can counter this false impression.

Destry · 2015-09-25 15:23:01

colak wrote #295130:

to solve the <html lang="en" dir="ltr"> problem

I’m not sure I understand the problem, exactly. So is that saying somebody wouldn’t be able to write in Arabic in one of these threads because the dir attribute? Or is that just trying to be precise for the sake of machines? What if we just dropped the “dir” attribute and half-lied about the English. ;)

uli · 2015-09-25 16:00:11

Edit: Destry, in case you didn’t get notification mails for the moved posts: There are now three of them here, taken from another topic.

Pyanepsion made two more posts on internationalisation of the forum elsewhere, yet before this topic was created, hence I can’t move them here without turning the topic topsy-turvy and Destry losing ownership of it, so I just link to them.

Post #1
Post #2

Last edited by uli (2015-09-25 16:05:45)

uli · 2015-09-25 16:55:37

Destry, you’ll have meant my post in particular, and I was a little in consternation that you interpreted my reply the way you made it clear here. I hope I clarified that in my post for Pyanepsion and for everybody who’s not an English native speaker.

Pyanepsion has brought up interesting points of view, though, that I find are in a better home in a topic named “Internationalisation” than in two other ones that are about Textpattern numbering images. Especially the proposal to implement a flag symbol is worth putting into reality and it should be doable even with the point in mind that future forum software upgrades should be as painless as possible. In my mind, it could be done by adding a formatted snippet of code to the “From” field in the forum’s user preferences, something like {{fr-fr}} that then can be transformed by the forum JS into an image call.

colak · 2015-09-25 17:25:01

Destry wrote #295134:

I’m not sure I understand the problem, exactly. So is that saying somebody wouldn’t be able to write in Arabic in one of these threads because the dir attribute? Or is that just trying to be precise for the sake of machines? What if we just dropped the “dir” attribute and half-lied about the English. ;)

It’s not about machines but the direction of text which I think that will give us problems:) I think that we should be politically correct and allow for either direction should we go international. It’s not just arabic which is rtl. If I remember correctly the list includes hebrew, aramaic, yiddish and urdu but I am sure that there are more. It is this problem I am highlighting.

Destry · 2015-09-25 18:41:20

Whoa. Strange forum stuff going on. When I replied to Colak in this thread originally there was only his reply to my head post. Now I see all kinds of replies before and in between. Nuts!

Anyway, I apologize if I’ve confused anyone. And I’m not in any way bringing this up to single anyone out, I’m just bringing it up after having noticed it a few times. The thread I quoted was just the latest one. Hopefully nobody has taken anything personally. Not intended.

It’s just a conversation piece, not a French riot-strike-burn-tires-in-middle-of-autoroute. ;)

Destry · 2015-09-25 18:50:49

uli wrote #295129:

one of our moderators, Destry

I always forget I’m a moderator. I’m not sure that’s wise…

uli wrote #295135:

Destry, in case you didn’t get notification mails for the moved posts: There are now three of them here, taken from another topic.

Ah, okay. I see you’ve been doing some moving magic. Thanks for the clarification.

Pyanepsion · 2015-09-26 16:12:05

Whoa. Strange forum stuff going on.

The entanglements resulting from displaced messages are always fun.

it could be done by adding a formatted snippet of code to the “From” field in the forum’s user preferences, something like {{fr-fr}} that then can be transformed by the forum JS into an image call.

For SEO, it’s possible to specify multiple languages for a single page, but this is undesirable.

When a forum is very busy, it is preferable that there is a sub-forum by language. This allows the natives of the same language to understand each. Textpattern does not have a sufficient hearing to afford to dilute into its SEO juice .

By this, the solution written in one language, Anglo-Saxon, appears to me the most relevant, and add a simple flag should delight every nationality.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2015-09-25 07:39:55