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Is that true? That there are now more Spanish speakers in the US than native English language speakers???
Posted 70 months ago.
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Read it in today's Guardian for example. On page 13 there is a discussion on the abandonment of languages in school teaching. The RH column "Expert View" by Prof Alan Smithers, says that the "main spoken languages in the world are Mandarin, English, Hindustani and Spanish" and goes on to say that "there are now more Spanish speakers in the United States than English".
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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And Brazilian?!
no?!
Posted 70 months ago.
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Not Available Some of the criticisms of Flickr come from people who didn't read the rules. Ignorance is no excuse but if they can't understand them ...
I can understand your not caring, after all at your declared age of 100 you don't have much time left on Flickr anyway.
But I think that Flickr should make a "business decision" to make the rules available with ease to non-English speakers. It doesn't affect me directly - English is my native tongue - but I deplore parochialism in any form.
I have no specific feelings on Portuguese (Brazilian?) Roberto - such decisions should be based firstly on the number of members speaking the language.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Is that true? That there are now more Spanish speakers in the US than native English language speakers???
No, as is somewhat-easily discovered by checking the publicly-available language use data from the US census. For most reasonable definitions of "Spanish speaker" they range from between 5%-11% of the US population.
The Guardian story is down to an unintentional error by the professor which was not caught by the editorial staff. You can read more about it here: itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003503.html
As for the main question, I can only suppose that translating the community guidelines would be somewhat beneficial. Though so long as the interface remains English-only it strikes me as a bit of a moot question.
Posted 70 months ago.
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I would think having Flickr in as many languages as possible would only be a good thing. The more languages it is in, the more pollinated cross cultural exchange that can take place.
Matt, for someone who seems to consistently remind everyone that the world is a lot bigger than the U.S. I would think that you would be a big advocate for having different language versions of Flickr on an opt in user basis.
It would be very easy in terms of all of the basic documentation of flickr including help, community guidelines, FAQ, etc. to let a user choose which version of flickr they wanted to browse in.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Thomas Hawk edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Matt, for someone who seems to consistently remind everyone that the world is a lot bigger than the U.S. I would think that you would be more supportive of different language versions of Flickr on an opt in user basis.
I would be supportive, but that isn't what was being talked about here. It's just my view that translating the rules is probably of much less help to speakers of other languages than translating the interface would be.
Posted 70 months ago.
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yeah, I misstated that, should have said I'd figure you'd be a much stronger advocate for doing exactly that, translating the entire interface. And you probably are.
Posted 70 months ago.
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not available.
I don't think having to offer non english support is a good reason not to translate. I think non English speakers would appreciate the translation with no contact support rather than no translation with no contact support. Certainly if this were an issue in the foreign language FAQ's it would be easy enough to say that Flickr staff contact support is only supported in English.
Flickr is indeed global. There is no reason why all basic shell info, documentation, etc. shouldn't represent that. This is something that Flickr should do.
Non English speakers will still have their own groups. But the documentation over the site in their language would make them feel more welcome here and having a more diversified global user base is a great thing. Some of the best photographers I know on Flickr are from outside the U.S.
Posted 70 months ago.
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por mi experiencia, muchos de los errores que se cometen ahora, se cometerian aun si las reglas estuvieran defnidas en idiomas distintos. El mejor ejemplo que encuentro de esto es enn los grupos o foros; aun asi cuando las reglas de estos estan traducidos a casi todos los idiomas posibles, la gente pasa de estas y someten lo que les da la gana. Aunque en teoria suena muy bien, no se lo mucho que haria para aliviar muchos de los problemas de los cuales te referies.
;)
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Nachosan edited this topic 70 months ago.
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not available says:
...I think the non-English speaking users have their own groups where they discuss issues in their language. ...
The specific case that led to my opening this thread was a discussion - a heated discussion - on Flickr censorship of artistic nudes. The photographs belonged to a Spanish speaking photographer working in Germany and, probably because of his opening, the major contributors wrote in Spanish. But the topic was not specific to them it is of general interest to many Flickr members. Moreover, it was evident that some of the Spanish-writing critics of Flickr did not seem to know the rules - or had "conveniently forgotten them". Maybe they didn't understand the English.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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I don´t think having the flickr rules in different languages would really change anything. Many of the groups that I belong to, really go out of their way to translate the rules into as many different languages as possible, but people still post and say what they want regardless. Though, in theory it does sound good and probably wouldn´t hurt to have them in the different languages I think many of the problems would still persist. Now, as Thomas suggested, translating the interface, now that I do blieve would be extremely beneficial and helpfull.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Nachosan edited this topic 70 months ago.
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though i'd like to see the interface and rules translated, the issue for me is more support oriented.
this isn't to say that flickr shouldn't go ahead and translate without having a multi-lingual support infrastructure in place.. but that they should anticipate growth and be ready to put one in place should any language group grow to prominence.
if flickr brings in other languages, they need to be able to speak to individuals and communities of that language, otherwise i think they're setting up potentially problematic situations.
Posted 70 months ago.
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but don´t people have more of a tendency to ask for support in the particular groups they frequent? so, if this is the case, couldn´t you implement the 1st as a short term thing?
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Nachosan edited this topic 70 months ago.
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I'm non-american and a non-English speaker. I didn't read the rules but that was my personal choice, it wasn't because they weren't available in my language (Portuguese). But I agree that such a thing would make the international users feel more welcome.
A couple of days ago I translated the Description text of a new group named TotusMundi. It was a pleasure for me, and I'm sure it made other users from Portugal, Brazil and other Portuguese speaking countries also join the group.
But I agree with Nachosan (although I don't Speak Spanish). Such changes wouldn't make the users "behave" better.
Oh, and there is no Brazilian language. In Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Principe,... and a few other smaller places we speak Portuguese.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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G. Ávila edited this topic 70 months ago.
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so, if this is the case, couldn´t you implement the 1st as a short term thing?
of course.
Posted 70 months ago.
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There are more than enough users of flickr that speak other languages that would in fact do this translation work for free if asked if Flickr were willing to go ahead with this. A simple post on the flickr blog saying they were doing this would generate enough excitement and free translators to translate the basic shell of flickr into multiple languages probably within less than a weeks time.
Support in languages should not hold back translation efforts.
Flickr should build out a language option for Flickr users as a preferences setting (this also is relatively simple to do) and support other languages if for no other reason than as G. Avila mentioned, international users would feel more welcome.
Posted 70 months ago.
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There are more than enough users of flickr that speak other languages that would in fact do this translation work for free if asked if Flickr were willing to go ahead with this. A simple post on the flickr blog saying they were doing this would generate enough excitement and free translators to translate the basic shell of flickr into multiple languages probably within less than a weeks time.
Thomas, if you were interested in why I'm not as vocal as you might have expected, you have given most of the problem right there. Lack of translators is never the issue. The technology has existed essentially forever (in web terms) to transparently serve the same URL in several languages, a URL-based scheme would be simplicity itself (think wikipedia), and a cookie-based preference would work as well. The amount of extra space required is miniscule. At a quick guess, if every single piece of the flickr interface was translated, including all the rules and terms, it'd still be easily counted in a small number of kilobytes. The only technical obstacle is in slightly more complicated templates, but they're not unusually so, it's just there'd be more of them.
The only thing that's ever lacking is support on the organisational side of things. A lack of commitment, essentially, because having English (or whatever, but English remains the big one) is Good Enough.
And arguing against Good Enough is the modern-day equivalent of tilting at windmills. So I tend to save my energy for other things, and count myself slightly lucky in this regard that I can read English.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Support in languages should not hold back translation efforts.
i disagree.
it is quite possible that such a change could spur the creation of much larger regional groups than flickr is used to.
i'd love to see the formation of such groups, but i'd also want flickr to be prepared to support these groups.
there should be a real plan in place, that's all. fotolog went through a lot of unnecessary twists and turns and cultural misunderstandings due to many of the factors we're talking about. it is true that they've come out on top, which is proof that having multiple language communities can work and will really benefit a service .. but they have an interface that caters to the internationalism ~ heck, their main page is geo-culturally structured!
it just isn't as simple as translating everything and expecting everything to work out in the end.
Posted 70 months ago.
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matt makes a really great point about 'good enough', i mean, fotolog has the majority of its users not speaking english as their mother tongue, and its interface and help system is entirely in english as far as i can tell.
which seems counter-intuitive, but is the state of affairs on that site.
anyhow, i thought i'd also bring up:
www.flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/41202/
where a bunch of us english speaking flickr users could go over to a chinese "knock off" of flickr and use it without that much difficulty.
honestly, i was only half joking about moving my photos over to it. i probably would have kept a second account there if not for the slow speed. i even had the post popular photo on the site for a while! me, a photographic superstar in china! who'd have thought!? ; )
anyhow, i guess i'm trying to say that while language is important, it probably isn't THE most important aspect of drawing an international user base.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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striatic (a group admin) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Matt,
The census bureau info is not accuate because it doesn't take into consideration the undocumented immigrants. In states like Florida, Texas and California - plus a few others - there is indeed more spanish speakers than english speakers. Of course, the whole thing becomes skewed because many spanish speakers are bilingual.
Also, I figure, in time Flickr will have to adopt a more international policy; only because it is good business.
Hey! Flickr is almost a nation in and of itself. Heh,heh - The United States of Flickr!
Posted 70 months ago.
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For the sake of argument, let's examine the three states Conor mentions. We actually have data, so it's fairly simple to do a bit of cocktail-napkin math and see if it's at least plausible that California, Texas, and Florida all have a Spanish-speaking majority.
You can extract a count of bilingual people from the census by comparing the number of people who speak English less than "very well" to the number of people who speak Spanish. To be generous, we'll count bilingual people as Spanish speakers, i.e., anyone who self-reports on the census as a Spanish speaker, whether bilingual or not, will count as Spanish-speaking.
California:
- 30,000,000 population.
- 8,000,000 Spanish speakers
- 14,000,000 extra undocumented residents to be a Spanish-speaking majority.
Texas:
- 19,000,000 population.
- 5,000,000 Spanish speakers
- 9,000,000 extra undocumented residents to be a Spanish-speaking majority.
Florida:
- 15,000,000 population.
- 2,500,000 Spanish speakers.
- 10,000,000 extra undocumented residents to be a Spanish-speaking majority.
That gives a grand total of 33,000,000 undocumented migrants required to make those three states have Spanish-speaking majorities. Current estimates in the US are 12(official) to 22(high) million illegals. So there are at least 11,000,000 extra undocumented migrants above the highest current estimate required to make Florida, Texas and California (leaving aside those "few others") Spanish-speaking majorities.
There's admittedly some wiggle room and redefinitions of those figures possible, but I doubt any reasonable redefintion of "Spanish speaker" would make up the extra required.
I have a hunch that the idea of a Spanish speaking majority is heavily influenced by the media; for example, both Miami and LA have a higher-than-average Spanish-speaking population, and are both have a large presence in US media and culture which could account for this sort of misperception.
What I'd be extremely wary of, however, would be any politician spouting this "majority of Spanish speakers" line - they're likely either gullible, bad at math, trying to scare you (that seems to be the general tone of immigration politics in the US, anyway), or any combination thereof.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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matt edited this topic 70 months ago.
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First af all I accept that the Guardian article was misleading - its author seems to have acknowledged that, though there was no correction in today's paper - what he meant to say, as some of the comments above indicate, is that in some states in the US there is a majority of Spanish speakers. None of this affects the issue fundamentally - there is a large population in the world who speak Spanish and, it seems, many of them use that language in Flickr general threads, including this one now. And Portugese is spoken in much of S America. And so on ...
So far as translating the rules etc is concerned may I point out that there is a Translations group in Flickr which has helped me on one or two occasions. Just let's avoid machine translations which have rended (not rendered) texts I tried to translate with them.
I am given to wonder how many illegal immigrants in the US are members of Flickr.
Posted 70 months ago.
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It would nice if flickr said hello to me in Welsh occasionally, and 'Bore Da' (pronounced boray da) to the rest of you as well.
Posted 70 months ago.
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They might add it if you asked them - a lot of the greetings were added at user's suggestions.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Matt,
I may be off for Florida, and maybe even Texas. But go outside urban centers in California and the language you most hear is spanish. Even in major urban centers (the bay area and L.A.), the spanish language is ubiquitous.
Los Angeles is a case all by itself - just simply amazing in terms of a cultural paradigm shift:
The L.A. public school district must deal with 154 foreign languages that are spoken at home. L.A. has the largest population of Vietnamese and Armenians outside those respective countries. And the second largest latin american city (second only to Mexico City) in the geographic north america is Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is totally surreal!!
Posted 70 months ago.
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I'm not saying it's not ubiquitous, just that there's a large jump from "you hear it everywhere" to "a majority of the population". I remember studies (though I can't find them) which showed people estimated the proportion of African-Americans in the US as double or higher the real figure, and just recently in the UK the generally-accepted idea that there were 1,000,000 Polish workers in the country was shown to be more than double the actual number.
People are just really bad at this sort of estimation, which is why it's always worth comparing it to real data to see if your guesses are plausible. It's not limited to cases of counting minority groups, either: the same statistical mis-intuition may explain a lot of "spooky" coincidences, like the birthday paradox.
Posted 70 months ago.
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matt,
Actually, no real argument there. Things like this are always in flux and hard to pinpoint one way or the other. I mean, let's say you were able to take the population Hawaii - not just residents, but tourists too - a snap-shot of the all the people that are there at one moment in time. At least half (just a wild guess) are probably Japanese speakers. It's almost (heh) like Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, accomodating all the cultures and languages of the world is just something Flickr will have to do, I think.
Posted 70 months ago.
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couples of months ago I translated the Guidelines to Arabic Language and now I'm trying to spread it to most of the arabic groups I know..
Posted 70 months ago.
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Interesting discussion!
Can somebody give an example of popular, community oriented website with really good multiple language support?
FYI, I’m Russian who speaks English and Portuguese and I work for Flickr, but at the moment it’s just a curiosity. :)
Posted 70 months ago.
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The closest thing I can think of is World of Warcraft, which isn't really a website. www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww01790p
To be honest, I'm having trouble even thinking of another popular, community-oriented website at all, let alone one with multilingual support. I suppose I'm just not down with the kids these days.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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matt edited this topic 70 months ago.
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@matt
Both your examples actually use different sites for different languages; I would call them “language ghettoes”.
What I’m really looking for is a website with organic integration of multilanguage support into single community environment.
Something with tools that facilitate interaction between people who speak different languages.
May be I’m just dreaming…
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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SilentObserver edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Ah, I see. I expect that any such interaction would be really limited by the state of machine translation (which seems like a necessary component). It's getting better all the time, but it's still pretty woeful for 'normal' language. I'm not aware of anyone who's used machine translation in any sort of 'live' system like this.
Edit - I do have some relevant experience, though: We built a cross-language question-answering system whose first stage translated short, factoid-based questions from French and German to English. Questions were accurately translated just under 30% of the time. A lot of the errors were still comprehensible, but some of the errors would really hinder community interaction: untranslated words, and there are a whole set of possible errors when it comes to correctly translating, not translating, or mistranslating names and titles. Personally, I'd be a little afraid of trying to use something like that in customer support - one spelling error or slang word, and it's broken. (I can send you a reference if you like, but that's about the extent of the relevant information).
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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matt edited this topic 70 months ago.
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People are discussing things as if Flickr was not international to begin with. It was Canadian, remember?
Posted 70 months ago.
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Cidade Maravilhosa [deleted] says:
I totally understand where you're coming from. I mean -English is my second language and I still find it difficult at times to understand some things on here eg. Rules. I think there should be some consideration taken in translating for all non-english speakers etc.
Posted 70 months ago.
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from wikipedia on final fantasy XI : "Immediately upon the conclusion of creating the English version of Chrono Cross, work began on the basic system of play for Final Fantasy XI. The Japanese game players were told to expect English speaking players, since the game makers intended to create a unified game world instead of different ones balkanized by language.[13] This development allowed for a 66% reduction of potential costs in setup.[14]
Different creatures had to have their names standardized, as they are called by different names in the Japanese and American versions.[13]
... Final Fantasy XI was awarded the grand prize from the Japan's Consumer Entertainment Software Association (CESA) for 2002-2003 along with Taiko no Tatsujin.[53] It was also named IGNs Game of the Month for March, 2004, citing the games huge customization and its successful cross-platform and cross-language game world.[54]
a friend and huge FFXI fan explained to me that the system incorporates its own symbolic language that allows the english speaking and japanese players to fight in teams and trade with one another. communication is done by selection from a list of pre-translated phrases and icons or somesuch.
i asked him if it was "smileys on steroids" and he said that it kind of was.
note: i've no first hand knowledge of this game, but as the system was described, it provides an extremely effective method of communication within a highly defined context.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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striatic (a group admin) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Much as it pains me to say it, because I instinctively support inclusion, translation may fragment flickr into language groups. The world encompassing aspect of flickr that is so attractive will be eroded with multi language support.
It is like MIcrosoft. Resent them as much as you want, but the de facto MS Dos/Windows platform, achieved with questionable commercial tactics, is what has made the ubiquity of computing power possible.
Posted 70 months ago.
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iansand9876 Pro User says:
Much as it pains me to say it, because I instinctively support inclusion, translation may fragment flickr into language groups. The world encompassing aspect of flickr that is so attractive will be eroded with multi language support.
It is like MIcrosoft. Resent them as much as you want, but the de facto MS Dos/Windows platform, achieved with questionable commercial tactics, is what has made the ubiquity of computing power possible. There is already a degree of fragmentation in Flickr. What triggered me off into starting this thread (which has been very interesting and constructive) was a thread on a topic of general interest where most of the comments were in Spanish - a language I don't know. I tried machine translation to get the gist, at least, of the comments and the results were laughable - they even turned my correct English into a sort of pidgin. What they would do with some of the mis-spelt (or mis-typed) efforts we meet in Flickr goodness only knows.
Microsoft, for all its faults, has multilanguage versions of Windows routinely and a big assortment of keyboard layouts to match.
There have been comments above about which other sites have multilingual content, support etc. How about Flickr possibly being a "first" - that would be a great selling point, surely?
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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OK. Let's encourage the fragmentation. Sometimes I wonder.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Couldn't the Flickr community help with translations? You know, a bit like wikipedia. I'd have thought that there are enough cunning linguists around here to come to a well-written concensus.
Posted 70 months ago.
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iansand9876,
Having a set standard is actually a blissfully wonderful thing. You know, like treating all people, regardless of gender, race, etc., the same. A set standard makes for much easier co-habitation.
But, the day the whole world speaks just one language, whether it be Chinese, English or whatever, will mean great impoverishment for all.
Posted 70 months ago.
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shhexycorin,
What kind of linguists!?
Grrl friend, you're naughty. You need spanky spanky.
Posted 70 months ago.
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OK, so why not go with Shexycorin's suggestion and get some community members to translate the rules? It's not rocket science.
The (computer game) community that I run has very active German and French "sub-communities" and the users themselves localised usermanuals, help files and FAQs themselves. Now there are German and French communities, thankfully run external to our company site. If I had to continually deal with foreign language speakers coming to me for support they would be sorely disappointed and I would waste a good portion of my day trying to assist in languages I don't speak or understand.
As it stands, our shopping mall came with multi-language support and when a non-English-speaking user contacts me for assistance in their own language I am forced to use Google language tools to translate. I wish I'd never implemented multi-language support now.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Yolise,
Good idea! Maybe Flickr could remunerate the language helpers by giving them free acounts or something.
By the way, Altavista's babelfish is the best online translater for my money.
Posted 70 months ago.
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♥ shhexycorin ♥ and Yolise May I draw your attention to my comment above: "So far as translating the rules etc is concerned may I point out that there is a Translations group in Flickr which has helped me on one or two occasions."
Posted 70 months ago.
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OK, cool. Issue sorted then, presumably?
Posted 70 months ago.
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There's a followup to the "majority of Spanish speakers" question here:
itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003510.html
Including colourful maps that you can play with yourself here: www.mla.org/
Quick summary: Like we more or less concluded, there's going to be a majority of Spanish speakers somewhere depending on how you define the areas you're going to measure. States appear to be too big, but the maps in the post are broken down by county - and there are a quite a few counties where the proportion of Spanish speakers is close to 50%, plenty of examples where it's a majority, and even a couple where it's over 95%. The catch (of course) is that most of the counties with very high proportions of Spanish speakers have low total populations,
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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matt edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Can somebody give an example of popular, community oriented website with really good multiple language support? FYI, I’m Russian who speaks English and Portuguese and I work for Flickr, but at the moment it’s just a curiosity. :)
Why does support have to accompany translation. Wouldn't translation without support be better than nothing?
Posted 70 months ago.
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matt,
"majority of Spanish speakers", question here:
"play with here"? or "play with yourself here"?
Heh,heh,heh - you're funny.
Scottish humor?
Posted 70 months ago.
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>enough cunning linguists around here to come
There are, but it's a problem finding any who haven't aleady got a lot on their plate. And which bits of the site need the most translation? Go and start a group for each language, and go through the FAQ item by item, I'd suggest as an organising principle. But I've no idea how to motivate it all. A wiki would be the best medium ...
Anyway, Flickr Inc should be paying for this.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Anyway, Flickr Inc should be paying for this.
Only if they think it's necessary. If they don't, but other people want it, then those people should just go ahead and do it. Much like people create tools and toys. Flickr doesn't pay for those even though Flickr benefits in the long run.
In my situation, we didn't pay anyone to do it because we didn't feel it was necessary. Nor do we host the foreign language versions on our site.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Yolise edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Scottish humor?
It's not quite crude enough.
Seriously, though, it was unintentional. :-)
Posted 70 months ago.
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*smirk*
Ok.
kiss,kiss...};-)
Posted 70 months ago.
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There are, but it's a problem finding any who haven't aleady got a lot on their plate.
Drift Words, seriously this is no problem whatsoever. A simple call out to the community and flickr could be translated, with free help from the community, in less than a week in 15 different languages or more. It's really not difficult to get the volunteers it's been done elsewhere with much smaller communities.
The simple question is not one of translation resources. The simple question is could/would flickr build the architecture to support people entering flickr in different languages (i.e. given that flickr is largely built in PHP how hard would the templating be for them, etc. and do they think that having a more international flavor at flickr a good thing.)
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Thomas Hawk edited this topic 70 months ago.
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GREASEMONKEY SCRIPTS.
That is the solution.
Posted 70 months ago.
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a) > not difficult to get the volunteers
Good ones?
b) > would flickr build the architecture
Exactly. The architecture is more important than the text itself, and that's even harder to do volunteer-wise. Look at the mess that wikipedia gets into more than occasionally -- sometimes more disambiguation articles than articles. Given the variable quality of a) and Flickr's undoubted desire to keep their brand values under close control (not that they have exactly prevented shambolism in the past) I would guess "no".
Posted 70 months ago.
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a) > not difficult to get the volunteers
Good ones?
Easy as pie.
Posted 70 months ago.
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I will add that even if they're not professional-calibre translators, professional translators love having the sort of material they'd produce, because the volunteers will be very familiar with the various connotations of the words used, which is a tricky thing in any domain-specific translation.
'Set' is a good example - I can think of at least two French translations: 'collection' and 'série', and there are probably a couple more since my vocab is a little rusty (if anyone wants to correct me, chime in! I'm trying to re-learn my once-wonderful French). I'd lean towards 'série' of those two, but I don't think it's an obvious choice.
Posted 70 months ago.
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I'm just speculating, but I don't think Flickr would localize the interface without being prepared to offer customer support in each of the localized languages. Yahoo does operate in many countries/languages (http://world.yahoo.com/) so it is possible that they could pull it off.
Posted 70 months ago.
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I'm just speculating, but I don't think Flickr would localize the interface without being prepared to offer customer support in each of the localized languages. Yahoo does operate in many countries/languages (http://world.yahoo.com/) so it is possible that they could pull it off.
that sounds, well, sound.
it'd be really great to see this, and it sounds like that approach would be up to flickr's quality standard.
it does concern me that this might get back-burnered due to the time and effort required to set up support structures, especially because the idea has a lot of potential.
still, while flickr features seem to take a while to develop, they DO eventually get released and the site keeps moving forward. i do hope that flickr pushes forward on multi-language interface and support, applying this same philosophy.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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striatic (a group admin) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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also: world.yahoo.com/ .. to save some copy and pasting.
Posted 70 months ago.
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one thing about getting volunteers to do the translation..
a site like flickr evolves over time
yahoo is big, and has many international divisions. i suspect that they have people in these international divisions who do translation work.
i worked at kodak canada for a bit in their e-business department, and EVERYTHING we produced had to be bilingual. we'd send off copy to a translation bureau in Quebec, and they were FAST. same day turn-around on pretty vast volumes of text.
as a project developed, the text might change and they'd always be there to translate, quickly.
now, volunteers are great, don't get me wrong, but professionals are better and way more reliable over time. better to set up infrastructure where flickr could update its translation, quickly, than to have more of a "one off" philosophy and get a bunch of volunteers to do it.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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striatic (a group admin) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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EVERYTHING we produced had to be bilingual. we'd send off copy to a translation bureau in Quebec, and they were FAST. same day turn-around on pretty vast volumes of text.
And I'll bet they were expensive as well? We pay about 20p a word for game translations, but the bullk of the cost is actually in the localisation testing. That's where the serious costs start mounting up. Often 10 to 20+ times the cost of the localisation in the first place. Massively important part of the process however.
We would never use a volunteer to localise proper projects. Our community does their own translations of community stuff, but that's off their own back. We don't ask them to do it.
Posted 70 months ago.
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I'm just speculating, but I
Hah! I like that. Very funny.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Lots has happened overnight (my night in Europe) so I will try to deal with the main issues.
1. No I have not talked to the Translations group - I think that would be premature until Flickr indicates its willingness to post multi-language rules etc and then I think the request should come from them. As should any discussion on pricing.
2. I accept that translation can be tricky and have had some experience of where this can go wrong. The process I used, which worked fine,was to have any translation vetted by somebody whose native language it was and who understood the subject (most of the translations I had to deal with were highly technical). Before I started this process bits of some of the translations (from German into English, translated by a German) were a joke.
3. I agree that, certainly as a first step, putting up the rules in other languages would be a help. Support would be a more complex and expensive option but at least users would be able to consult and understand the rules which, on occasion, they have been told they have broken.
4. Beware of differences between Quebec French and that spoken in France - maybe you need to use both versions, that would be something that people using those dialects should be consulted on. There may be similar problems with Spanish as spoken in (parts of) Spain and in S America, for example.
5. Maybe I was unlucky but my experience with Greasemonkey scripts put me off them. I was happlily using one and there was an update of Firefox, over which the hacker had no control of course, but the result was that the script proved useless until it was revised. And that could happen every time Firefox had an upgrade.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Conor Ryan Pro User says:
...By the way, Altavista's babelfish is the best online translater for my money. Please save your money - it was Babelfish that made such a dog's dinner of a mainly Spanish thread I commented on above - and changed my correct English (which happened to be in the same thread) into Pidgin.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Machine translations are always going to be poor and should never be used for anything other than to simply get the gist of something.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Hah! Indeed.
Lost in translation?
With the advent of quantum computing this problem may be a thing of the past.
Just imagine! You’ll be sitting in front of you holographic computer screen with a magneto wand (yup, no more keyboards) and a vocalizer. You will be monolingual; able to speak to anyone, in any language (idiomatically and slang optimized) – and all done in real time.
Yes. This is truly right around the corner. MARK MY WORDS!
And you thought Philip K. Dicks's 'Minority Report' was just fiction. Dream on!
Posted 70 months ago.
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Yes, current "machine" translation is pretty funky. One of my favorite games is to translate something into one language, then translate it back. Then translate it into another. The results are wickedly funny.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Yolise Pro User says:
Machine translations are always going to be poor and should never be used for anything other than to simply get the gist of something. Babelfish didn't even give me the gist of the comments I used it on. Many words were not translated, so that I got a mish-mash of Spanish and English and I couldn't find the "offending" words in a dictionary - maybe because I was unfamiliar with the associated grammar.
Posted 70 months ago.
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This is quite common with all online translators. Lots of reasons. Misspellings (even Spanish-speakers misspell :-) ), words that aren't in their database, new words that have been coined, colloquialisms, etc.
I've never yet found an online translator that has translated all the words in a long passage. Recently someone left a comment on my blog, and even though I speak Spanish (badly!), I couldn't understand it. I ran it through Google's language tools and it was completely incomprehensible. Then I got somone in Spain to translate it and they couldn't work it out either! All I determined was it was written by a relative (!), but I still don't know what they were saying!
Posted 70 months ago.
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Could it have been some dialect of Spanish?
By the way, my experience is not limited to Spanish. Some time ago I sent a quotation in German (which I have a reasonable knowledge of) to a friend, who put it through Google's translation facility and sent the result back to me. I nearly died laughing. That, too, had some untranslated German words in the English text and I can assure you that the original was not in dialect and was grammatically correct.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Yolise,
Heh,heh,heh - Posible traslado de pocho de Gringolandia, No? O posible de pocho de Anglo-Sahones. Aun que, no vacunar carpetas aqui - soloment alfombras.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Ooops!! ...Solomente
Posted 70 months ago.
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Could it have been some dialect of Spanish?
Do you mean my relative's post? Quite possibly. He was Mexican, not Spanish. I don't know how different they are, but it could be any number of things. A very florid speaker using poetic phrases that were unfamiliar to me, perhaps.
Here's Google's translation if anyone's interested: "Top with your work on your grandfathers when meti the name of the author of this I articulate in Google. Apparently it comes being your nephew. Good then today encontre something of (the Day) on the intellectuals in the DF and as some reacted before the “transparency” of the elections. I already have a month of elections and I like to fall in this world where “you spill” diverse spaces of your thought in a calm language. What but it interests to me of you is as you walk formulating these sketches. It is as without conocerte encontre seated to you in divan with a box of memories and until me you translated them. quo vadis?
Posted 70 months ago.
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Whew!
Pablo Neruda on LSD?
Posted 70 months ago.
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Idioms (modismos), I think, are what make learning other languages so hard.
Spanish speakers ten to laugh at English speakers over the idea of "catching a bus". Heh,heh - I mean, you know, it's reasonable to catch a ball - but, a bus?
That, and of course the subjunctive clause.
Multi-lingual people make me green with envy...
Posted 70 months ago.
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Funnily enough, I just ran that same paragraph through Babelfish and Systran and the translation is precisely the same - word for word.
So much for one being better than the other. I think all the online translators use Systran actually.
This one was slightly different, but equally incomprehensible: ets.freetranslation.com/
Posted 70 months ago.
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Hmm. You got me then?
I will say though, I relate to your frustration. Sometimes it seems like really common words just aren't available; which I just don't understand.
Of course, then there are situations like in the case of the word (Sp) "varios" and (Eng) "various". In Spanish it means "several" and in English it means "array".
For the moment, at least - know several languages and you will always have a job. I guess?
Posted 70 months ago.
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You know, further thinking about the idiom "to take" - as in to take a bus - it really is kind of odd when you think about it carefully. I mean, like, who or what is taking whom? Isn't the bus taking you and not the other way around. You know, you board the bus and IT takes YOU - right? Like, taking the bus, as if you were strolling down the street with a bus in your baby stroller (pram, i guess, for the Brits).
It's simply a miracle communication actually get done.
P.S. ...And the Spanish speakers use the same verb, "tomar" - "to take".
Posted 70 months ago.
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Yeah, kind of weird that it couldn't work out "encontré", which is "found", I believe (like the song "Encontré El Amor"). Or "conocerte" which would be some conjugation of "to know", presumably.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Heh,heh... Whew!
In Spanish (my own is pretty funky) "saber" is "to know", and "conocer" is "to be familiar with". Seems like a better distinction to me. Or like the word "corner"; in Spanish if it's convex it's "esquina", and if the corner is concave it "rincon" - again more exact, I think (heh - or maybe it's the other way around?).
I feel profoundly lucky that English is my mother tongue, but for my money, the thing that makes it such a "good" language is the fact that so many people are able to speak it, otherwise - as far as vocabulary and other details go - make it on the merry-go-round, lose it on the swings.
Posted 70 months ago.
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We're drifting somewhat off topic, interesting though the drift may be.
My impression is that the majority of contributors to this thread agree on the need, at least, for the rules to be in other langauges than English. It would be interesting to hear more from the staff on this matter.
By the way, one of the most recent contributions to the mainly Spanish thread that triggered off my opening comment here, came from a French man decrying (in English) the extensive amount of comment there in Spanish. I had previously asked why this was so but to date nobody has answered me - maybe because they don't understand English. At times the thread looked like a dialogue between the deaf and the dumb.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Prora, did you see Stewart's reply? I think that was fairly definitive, hence the moving off-topic. OK, maybe not "hence" but might as well, hey? :-)
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Yolise edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Yolise and Prora,
Ok, I know, a little off topic again:
We all know that English, by far, dominates the internet - but it sure would be interesting to see amongst us Flickr users what other languages are in use and their statistical breakdown.
Thus far, the languages I see are: (and not in any particular order) English, French, Spanish, Portugues, Japanese, Chinese and a few Slavic languages. No doubt there are others.
Back on topic:
Yes, I agree, more language support!
P.S. I know, I'm borin' y'all t' tears - I'll make that my last comment on this thread... It's just an interesting topic.
Bye.
Posted 70 months ago.
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Yolise Pro User says:
Prora, did you see Stewart's reply? I think that was fairly definitive, Yes I saw it but it looked delightfully vague to me. The opening phrase was "I'm just speculating, ". What he seemed to say In his speculative view, was that Flickr would need to go the whole way, multi-language rules etc plus full multi-language support. Subsequent discussions seemed to favour a stepwise approach, with at least the rules in several languages.
It would be useful indeed, as suggested by Conor if we had some idea as to the number of poeple with native languages other than English, are members of Flickr - if the statistics are available. It would need Flickr to know a bit more about many people than revealed in their profiles wihich often omit where they are living or originated. I'd add German to his list, by the way.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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πρώρα (Prora) edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Prora,
"I'm just speculating,"
I think Stewart was joking around there.
Originally posted 70 months ago.
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Thomas Hawk edited this topic 70 months ago.
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Which proves my oft-repeated belief that humour doesn't travel well. (If you are right, of course.)
Posted 70 months ago.
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hmmm... looks like flickr might be looking at localization after all.
Interview with Caterina Fake:
" S.R.: Will we have Flickr in another languages soon?
C.F.: We are working on some, yes, but unfortunately for Spain, Asian languages will likely come first."
www.laflecha.net/entrevistas/en/caterina-fake_-fundadora-...
Posted 70 months ago.
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The interview of course largely gets Flickr's numbers way wrong though by quoting Time. Also this was the first time I've actually seen the $30 million number price tag as any kind of in print reported number for what Yahoo paid for flickr. I always thought that was more of a speculated number and that the actual number was private.
Posted 70 months ago.
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