You and me in Babel
Imagine an English-speaking website, where everything is written in English. The author might or not speak another language, as well as the visitors, but all of them normally write in English when replying in that website, enabling them to communicate.
Then there comes the odd visitor which decides to write in his/her own language — not English. And … ta-da! Conversation ends up there. The other readers usually don't know what's in the message so they don't write anything else, just in case they go off-topic. So that's it. Discussion ruined in just one go, 90% of the times.
Occasionally it might be a different case, the non-English comment is absolutely ignored, then its author feels ignored and never writes again.
What should we do?
In this website, I have tried several approaches. First there wasn't any warning message, and people posted in whatever they liked. Usually if I posted in Spanish, they posted in Spanish too. If I posted in English, some of them posted in English and the rest of Spanish-speaking people replied in Spanish.
Then I added messages right before the comments form, but it didn't work: apparently no one reads the text before the comments form; they go straight to fill the Your name, Your email, Your url and Your comment fields. I could be insulting them and they would write comments anyway.
I also thought of sending the contents of the message to one of those nifty web services which detect in which language is a text written, to be able to ask them (again) to write in English, but it would not work either; they would just click OK and continue sending the message in Spanish anyway, as every user does when a pop up opens.
I even translated some comments from Spanish to English and let the authors know about that, asking them to write in English next time (which didn't happen), because even if I understand the comments, there might be more people which don't, and I didn't want them to feel excluded from the conversation.
The real truth
Some excuses were in the lines of saying it's too much of an effort to write in English
, or I can't express my thoughts in English
.
But since I never discuss metaphysical topics here and it's more about technical and programming stuff, I really doubt there's a lack of vocabulary or concepts which can be expressed in Spanish but not in English. In fact, it's usually the opposite; I find very complicated to write about some tech stuff in Spanish because I wouldn't know how to translate certain terms.
Let me guess… Is it laziness? Are Spanish speakers lazier than anybody else? No, it can't be that. If they were truly lazy, they would even avoid commenting - that would be an effort! Not only articulating a thought but also pressing the keys in the right sequence in order to write it down… yikes! And I have seen also Italians, French, German, Brazilian and a loooooooong etc doing this. So it ought to be a different reason.
And I have the feeling that it's something more profound which has something to do with the shame that makes them apologise for their bad English whenever they feel brave enough to write in English. There's some kind of inferiority complex, and as such, it acts as a barrier when interacting with the rest of us.
Listen up, there's nothing to be afraid of. No one was born instantly knowing any language and it's better to half communicate than not to communicate at all. So stop writing in Spanish when a page is in English and join the club of the people which can communicate across the globe no matter where they are from :-)
Josh
20080129
Sorry, probably I've misunderstood the whole point of this rant, but I'm not agree with you.
Seems like a little bit of humbleness is missing here, and of course a little more of respect to your readers, wherever they are from or whatever language they can speak or write properly. You said "I could be insulting them and they would write comments anyway"… I guess you were trying to prove this point when writing this rant.
Unfortunately, not everyone have had the same oportunities when learning languages. Talking about "the club of the people which can communicate across the globe" is… what should I say not to meant rude… mmm, "funny"? No, elitist fits better. Congrats, you're getting the best british elitism level here ;)
After reading this rant, I bet the whole thing bothers you more than your readers. At least, when I can't read a comment because I don't understand the language it is written in, I simply ignore it. Or, if I'm extremely interested (because the comment looks like sheding some light on whatever aspect of the post), I have no problem translating it, or better said, Google have no problem translating it for me (it's free!).
For god sake… it's internet! it's people connecting from anywhere! it's multiculturality! How many years did you go back in time when writing this? Please, don't be so close minded… But don't worry I've learnt your instructive lesson, next time I find a comment I can't understand I promise I will tell off the blogger!
So, please let people express theirselves in the language they are more comfortable with. You just have nothing to do about, sorry ;) Although you can, of course, keep writing this kind of rant in your blog (I thought this was a technical one, shame on me). Good luck for your readers, I "quit" ;)
sole
20080129
I understand perfectly people which do not feel comfortable when writing English, but there's no need for being ashamed. They are two completely different concepts. Not being comfortable may force you to get better in something in order to stop feeling uncomfortable; being ashamed may force you to not doing anything at all.
Insulting? What I am saying is that no one reads the small print. I'm describing my experiences trying to create a decent conversation. Call it "user interface design" experiences if you want.
It is extremely frustrating for me to see how this kind of attitudes prevent people from communicating, in "real life" as well. I have seen Dutch people being excluded from a conversation when they could probably have been included in it, just because the other speakers were embarrased of speaking in English. I have seen Spanish people being excluded from conversation when everybody else was speaking in Catalonian, or Basque.
And I am not even saying "do not use your mother tongue ever, write only in English!!". I use Spanish and Catalonian as well in other pages that I have, and I wish I could read and write in more languages.
But that's not the point here, I don't want to extinguish every other language. I'm just saying that if one comes to a page and begins writing in whatever he likes (that not being the original language in the page), whatever conversation might exist at that point just vanishes.
Is it close minded to ask for some cooperation?
Madieta
20080129
Tu escrius els teus posts en la llengua que més adequada et sembla per arribar a la gent que t'interessa que els llegeixi. Si jo et comento en castellà (o català) ho faig perquè crec que és la llengua més adequada per dirigir-me a tú, ja que no estic parlant a la resta dels teus lectors sino a tú. Si el que vull és participar a la conversa comuna que tú has iniciat amb el teu post sí que tindria sentit fer-ho en la mateixa llengua en que tú has començat.
Translation: are you kidding? I'm a procrastinator! :P
:P
sole
20080129
You're terrible! (in "Muriel's Wedding" style)
Isaac Z. Schlueter
20080130
I agree. Right or wrong, if you are going to be discussing technical topics, English is the common tongue. They don't like it, tough. It's easy for me to be flip about it, being a native english speaker, but hey, c'est la vie.
What about looking at this as a fun Wordpress plugin side-project? Add a field to the comments database to hold the English text. Then cron through the comments, and pass each one to a web service telling it to translate into English.
On the front-end, build a UI to let the user choose to see either the translation or the native text (since sometimes machine translation can have odd effects!)
IMO, there's no need to make anyone feel like they can't contribute. Of course, it's your site, not theirs, and so you get to set whatever rules you want :) Since you did ask nicely, after all, you're perfectly justified deleting non-english comments if you like.
pplux
20080130
Sory ! may englis are not very well XDD
=== XERO ===
20080130
Whoever posts (probably) has already decided what language they will post in before reading your message at the bottom. If this is the case it will be especially difficult to get them to change their mind and follow your instructions. Its a nice idea for everyone to communicate in English but I doubt that's going to happen.
Why not allow replies in any language and provide the reader with a language filter, a simple drop down combo box would do. You'll see different threads develop in the replies as the reader first filters according to their own language preference and then replies. It should help avoid the problem you describe at the beginning of your blog as a post in one language no longer affects the flow of conversation in another. It should be quite easy to implement. I reckon you could have it working after 2 cans of red bull ;-)
sole
20080130
Hey guys - they are good suggestions but I don't think I'm going to implement them. I'd rather avoid having redbulls, and I reckon I would need more than 2 cans for doing that!
I think I'm just going to ignore this whole thing, as I imagined and XERO confirms, when someone is going to reply he's already made up his mind and won't change it because I put "please write in english" right above the field.
Ahhh humans! :)
=== XERO ===
20080203
Anyway, if you do decide you would like something similar for your blog site please feel free to plagiarize the sourcecode from one of my google code projects. Its not a complete blogging system yet and it's still very raw but it does seperate comments into language specific threads allowing the user to filter by language. Well, what can you expect in 5 hours ;-)
http://code.google.com/p/lingoblog
Juanjo
20080212
I like the 'sysadmin-BOFH-soul-powered' approach: it's your blog, your home and… your rules.
Since I had a troll in my blog I have moderation switched on. It's not a problem for me because I have few comments, and I hope that don't impede people to comment… and often I don't accept comments under my criteria (it's kinda spam, off topic, or the usual 'help me please' with a hotmail address at the bottom).
Let's face it: you're bilingual (or tri… whatever), and your readers know it. I bet you cannot fight this fact :)
It's a pity for the people limited to just one language (let's say english), but I think it's part of the richness of this blog (and his writer).
Btw, I think I've been here before… I've just rediscovered your blog, and obviously english it's not my first language :D
dealsend
20080220
I read ur blog occasionally, I'm Greek, so I can only post a comment in English!
I feel this post as unlucky moment for you…
sole
20080221
Hey I'm not depressed or anything :-)
sole
20080221
By the way, I think I may steal that BOFH powered line… I liked that although I'm not an operator of any sorts but it sounds funny…
luchyx
20080227
Even if the message says that you're beautiful ?
sole
20080227
Which message? :-D
Luanatic con features » switching from Spanish to English
20081102
[...] reasons because I didn't write in English were perfectly explained by sole some time ago. I'm not trying to be "cool" by start writing English, I'm just trying to [...]