Questions in other languages than English

[xahu34]

Just a question: Wouldn't it make sense to have a section in the PTE forum in which questions could be placed in other languages than English. I am pretty sure that such a section would of favor for the PTE sales in other countries, e.g. Germany.

Regards,

Xaver

[Ken Cox]

USE GOOGLE OR BING TO TRANSLATE same as i told your countryman -

it has said many times that this is an English forum

ken

[sospan]

Yes, a seperate section in the forum for language other than English would be appreciated by many.

Apprerciate this is an English speaking forum but would be a good thing generally for PTE.

[Jean-Cyprien]

WnSoft, a forum speaking English, perhaps.

But an English forum ? Who said that ? Igor ?? Really ???

[Lin Evans]

It's questionable, in my opinion, whether this could be done and be effective. First, who is going to monitor and translate? Igor has his hands full with development and translating to and from English. The French have solved this by having their own French speaking PTE forum which works quite well. If we have multiple languages, where do we stop? We have members who speak Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Farsi, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, French, etc. Isn't it more effective to have one language rather than the confusion which would most likely result from trying to understand the nuances of multiple languages?

The strength of the forum and a major plus for PTE, in my opinion, is that forum members help each other with subtle issues which are difficult enough to explain in one language. Someone who speaks both English and one of the other languages would have to volunteer to translate. Do we have volunteers who are willing to attend to that every day 24/7?? It's unreasonable, I believe, to ask Igor to be the only one who answers questions and to try to translate to and from multiple languages.

As it is now, when a member has difficulty with English, most of us try very hard to phrase the answers in terms which are not culturally or linguistically challenged. Only if we can elicit the full cooperation of multilingual members could this be done effectively, in my opinion. The international language of "business" has become English. That may change in years to come, but right now it's done to maximize efficiency. It's been found that having one language, whatever that language happens to be, greatly simplifies transactions. Just my thoughts.....

Best regards,

Lin

Yes, a seperate section in the forum for language other than English would be appreciated by many.

Apprerciate this is an English speaking forum but would be a good thing generally for PTE.

[Ken Cox]

I BELIEVE i have even seen Igor reply that it is an English forum when a Russian comes on

it is no big deal using bing or google translators -- i have had to do it many times for members

ken

[xahu34]

...

The strength of the forum and a major plus for PTE, in my opinion, is that forum members help each other with subtle issues which are difficult enough to explain in one language. Someone who speaks both English and one of the other languages would have to volunteer to translate. Do we have volunteers who are willing to attend to that every day 24/7??

...

Hi Lin,

We should not go so far and ask for translation services of that kind. If someone poses a question in some language (say German), he/she cannot expect a support as it given under normal circumstances. But why not leaving the question as it is. There might be a few forum members who will understand the question, and who will be able to give an answer in the questioner's language. It would be quite easy for me to give short answers to German questions, in particular if I could do it in German, as well. But of course, I would not be willing to do the translation business. I do not see why a separate "international" forum section would reduce the strength of the forum as it is today. It could be regarded as an additional service.

Best regards,

Xaver

PS: Going via the Google translator cannot be regarded as a serious procedure!

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Maybe a section in the FAQ's could point a new non English speaking member to an on-line translation service before posting a question on the forum.

Yachtsman1.

[Lin Evans]

As a convenience, it might be useful, but users would have to be informed up-front and in their own language that support would not be guaranteed and that translating into English and posting on the regular forum would be necessary to insure a response. There would be necessarily a translation of the caveat into a "Read Me First" pinned instruction. As long as users didn't get upset when and if their questions were not answered, it would be perhaps helpful. But we could not expect Igor to monitor the threads like he does the regular forum. This is always an issue for software sold internationally. PTE has been very good with interface translations and even with multi-language user guide publication - but the language barriers will always be problematic I think.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin,

We should not go so far and ask for translation services of that kind. If someone poses a question in some language (say German), he/she cannot expect a support as it given under normal circumstances. But why not leaving the question as it is. There might be a few forum members who will understand the question, and who will be able to give an answer in the questioner's language. It would be quite easy for me to give short answers to German questions, in particular if I could do it in German, as well. But of course, I would not be willing to do the translation business. I do not see why a separate "international" forum section would reduce the strength of the forum as it is today. It could be regarded as an additional service.

Best regards,

Xaver

PS: Going via the Google translator cannot be regarded as a serious procedure!

[Lin Evans]

This might work for very elementary questions (obviously better than nothing), but the online translations are pretty "vanilla" at best and sometimes downright comical where technical questions are concerned. I suspect most internet users in all countries are pretty much aware of Google Translate, BabbleFish, etc.

Best regards,

Lin

Maybe a section in the FAQ's could point a new non English speaking member to an on-line translation service before posting a question on the forum.

Yachtsman1.

[Ken Cox]

"PS: Going via the Google translator cannot be regarded as a serious procedure!"

Xaver

GOOGLE TRANSLATOR HAS WORKED QUITE WELL when i have been called upon to help French, Dutch, Belgium and Spanish people -- they got the drift with the translation -- in fact we had a French lad living with my daughter - exchange student - and when she got stuck she would use google translator all the time and he could understand and when my grandson went to France he used it also

ken

[xahu34]

The situation is so easy to understand!

• I recommend PTE to a potential new German customer
  
• He visits the WnSoft homepage: It is English
  
• He has a look at the PTE forum: It is redistricted to English
  
• He asks for alternatives
  
• He buys m.objects or AquaSoft (or even Magix)
  

Congratulations for this wonderful English forum. For me it is an excellent place for training my English. I like it, others do not!

Regards,

Xaver

[davegee]

Xaver,

Are you telling us that M.Objects , Aquasoft or Magix have multilingual Forums?

DG

[xahu34]

...

Are you telling us that M.Objects , Aquasoft or Magix have multilingual Forums?

...

This is not major question here! The corresponding companies present themselves in German, and people from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany do buy their products, that's it

Anyway:

m.objects is a rather expensive tool, perhaps more suited for professional use (shows with lots of projectors (digital and analogue)...); but many German amateurs make use of it, as well. The forum is German.

Magix seems to be our market leader, regarding inexpensive tools. Their forum has the sections: Deutsch, English, Nederlands, Francais, Italiano, Espanol.

Aquasoft (to some extend similar to PTE, offering better features for modelling shows than Magix) seems to be restricted to the German speaking market.

Regards,

Xaver

[davegee]

This is not major question here! The corresponding companies present themselves in German, and people from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany do buy their products, that's it

Anyway:

m.objects is a rather expensive tool, perhaps more suited for professional use (shows with lots of projectors (digital and analogue)...); but many German amateurs make use of it, as well. The forum is German.

Magix seems to be our market leader, regarding inexpensive tools. Their forum has the sections: Deutsch, English, Nederlands, Francais, Italiano, Espanol.

Aquasoft (to some extend similar to PTE, offering better features for modelling shows than Magix) seems to be restricted to the German speaking market.

Regards,

Xaver

I think that it is relevant to the discussion here.

I think that having seperate forums for each language might be a problem for Igor.

If someone who is German speaking were prepared to take on the responsibility of acting as the go-between (moderator) for any conversations with Igor (in Russian or English) then a German section might be possible.

The same then applies to French, Spanish, etc.

DG

[Jean-Cyprien]

What I'm suggesting (and I believe that what Xaver is asking for, is the same thing), is not more than the very kind permission (!) to use occasionnaly a mother language (during the elapsed time a friend will answer), without such unkind answer in capital letters :

"THIS FORUM IS AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE FORUM

PLEASE USE GOOGLE"

Some (if not a lot) Google translations are absoluty awfull, specially if technical words are used. First it's difficult to write what we're asking, and the answer is sometimes not understandable too.

(I remember of the word mouton, " yoke " in English and translated by "mutton" !! and many other jokes ).

Thank you,

Jean-Cyprien

[davegee]

Jean-Cyprien, Xaver,

What you ask is not unreasonable.

DG

[Ken Cox]

Jean-Cyprien

Morasoft, Daniel and Patrick have no trouble understanding my google translations - in upper and or lower case

In this case i wanted to get the person's attention

STOP SIGNS AND ROAD SIGNS ARE ALWAYS IN UPPERCASE -- to get people's attention

Dave

you have a considerable amt of uppercase

http://davesnikonblog.blogspot.com/

WHY?

ken

[davegee]

ken,

i think that he might have thought that you were shouting at him?

dg

[Ken Cox]

Dave

IMHO that is a fallacy -- the internet was developed by the US army before windows 3 for communication

- i am a two finger typer -- quite often i forget - when i had my stroke 16 yrs ago this month i had to learn to type once more -- then somebody came up with the idea that if you use all capitals you are yelling at them -- they seem to forget that some people are slightly handicapped and you should be glad of their answers c/w capitals spelling mistakes etc

quite often i get letters saying "what do they mean in that thread" because the non English speaking people do not understand our meanings -- if one takes the time to explain to them in basic terms they are happy and will in turn try to answer a thread

btw

one of the first books written re the internet was written by a Canadian and it was 2" thick -- there were 2 Canadians that worked together and latter each went their separate ways

and finally if all people have to worry about is capitals and grammar they got too much time on their hands -- btw who corrected the hieroglyphics that are set in stone

bye bye

ken

[fh1805]

I would make the following observation: www.wnsoft.com website is presented in the English language. Therefore it seems to me that a prospective user visiting that website is likely to expect the software to default to English language, and the support to do likewise. They are not going to realise how international the user base is until they visit this forum. By the time they do visit the forum they are likely to have accepted that the web infrastructure that promotes and supports the software is based on the English language. Since joining the forum I must have read several thousands of posts. Only a tiny proportion of those have been written in a language other than English. And whoever has dealt with them has often taken the trouble to use such as Google translator to provide a translation of both the original post and their reply that was made using the poster's national language. Let's keep things in proportion.

I do not deny the validity of the point made by Xaver, that PTE might lose some sales because the support infrastructure uses English as its primary language. If I was considering buying software and had a choice of a company whose support site was in English or one whose site was in some other language, I would probably chose the English language one. It is perfectly natural to prefer to use your native language. But another point made early in this topic was that, whether we like it or not, the language of international commerce and of international communication is English. Wnsoft are in an international marketplace offering their product, and its support, to an international community. They have chosen to adopt English as their language of international communication. I believe that we, as product users, should respect that decision and work accordingly.

regards,

Peter

[Aginum]

Quite agree Peter, this forum should remain in English (though it does not suit me since I do not speak that language) ...

In France we have several forums dealing with PTE and Igor is sometimes participate (in English) and I guess it's the same in other countries ...

If not, why not create forums PTE in Germany, Spain, etc ?

Tout a fait d'accord Peter, ce forum doit rester en anglais (et pourtant ça ne m'arrange pas puisque je ne parle pas cette langue)...

En France nous avons plusieurs forums traitant de PTE et Igor vient parfois y participer (en anglais) et je suppose que c'est pareil dans d'autres pays...

Si ce n'est pas le cas, pourquoi ne pas créer de forums PTE en Allemagne, Espagne, etc ?

[xahu34]

...

In France we have several forums dealing with PTE and Igor is sometimes participate (in English) and I guess it's the same in other countries ...

If not, why not create forums PTE in Germany, Spain, etc ?

...

There are 4 forums in Austria/Germany: one for Wings Platinum, one for m.objects, one for AquaSoft, one for Magix. PTE does not have any platform in Austria/Germany, it is widely unknown. Nevertheless, isn't the German speaking market the biggest one inside the EU?

We should finish this discussion. I think its WnSoft's job to make decisions.

Regards,

Xaver

[westonphoto]

There is more than sufficient scope for misunderstanding / confusion / inadvertent offense within the confines of English English, Irish English, American English, International English, Canadian English, Australian English and all the other iterations of what, in itself, is a somewhat cosmopolitan language. Add in regional variants within each iteration and matters get even worse. All within a 'common' language! A 'tongue-in-cheek' example of this would be the term "US English" - in English English, 'US' is frequently used to mean either 'Unserviceable' or 'Useless'. Elsewhere in the world, I feel sure that it is rarely thought of in those terms. Usage and abusage vary widely in such an idiomatic language.

Laudable though it would be in principle to have multiple languages, I feel that the true effect would be divisive, of benefit to very few indeed and to the probable detriment of the great majority. There is a strong possibility that the effect would be to 'dumb down' a vibrant Forum until people simply departed silently, pausing only to check for updates from time to time.

[Ken Cox]

Possibly part of the cause of why so many oldies never visit any more -- look at my initial thread of members sites in the following section

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/87-links-to-p2e-members-sites/

ken