Non-english visitors

[SirPoonga]

Ok, I think I worded my other post wrong.  I noticed an increase in visitor that either don't speak english or speak poor english.

I was wondering if there is something we can do?  Are there people here who speak multiple languages.

A good example.  I was in chat, someone came in that spoke only spanish.  I tried to talk to him through babel fish, but babelfish only translated about half of everything correctly.  anyone know anything better than babelfish?

[SNAAAKE]

There is nothing we could do about it.

Sorry

Can't speak English?Too bad.

[rampy]

There is nothing we could do about it.

Sorry

Can't speak English?Too bad.

well... maybe if there's enough interest one of the admins could create an "international" forum where people could attempt to ask questions in their native/preferred language and if there are others from a similiar region/culture/language they could have a subset of byoac dialogue in german, spanish, or whatever...

Just a thought... I don't know of any translation tool that is better than the fish... I assume google's language tools are on par, but maybe its a little bit better.

rampy

[SirPoonga]

There is nothing we could do about it.

Sorry

Can't speak English?Too bad.

That's a single minded response.
No one can ever say there is nothing we can do about it.  As the saying goes, were there is a will, there is a way.

[Bursar]

If the site was constructed with a Content Management System such as PostNuke or PHPNuke, then there are language modules available. These modules allow users to translate the site into their native language.

Being only an English speaker, I have no idea how accurate these things are, but from what I have seen of foreign sites using these modules, the conversions to English are pretty good.

It would require a complete overhaul of the site, and the forums would have to be changed to a different system that ran as a plugin to either PostNuke or PHPNuke.

Both systems are relatively easy to implement, and there is a large community behind both projects. Personally I use PostNuke as I find it easier to setup and manage, but as always, YMMV.

[SirPoonga]

We'll have to ask one of the admins, planetjay.  he did that at mame.tk.

[1UP]

There is nothing we could do about it.

Sorry

Can't speak English?Too bad.

BTW, SNAAAKE, you're one of the culprits!  

[SNAAAKE]

from 1up

BTW, SNAAAKE, you're one of the culprits!  

SURE

[rampy]

If the site was constructed with a Content Management System such as PostNuke or PHPNuke, then there are language modules available. These modules allow users to translate the site into their native language.

Being only an English speaker, I have no idea how accurate these things are, but from what I have seen of foreign sites using these modules, the conversions to English are pretty good.

It would require a complete overhaul of the site, and the forums would have to be changed to a different system that ran as a plugin to either PostNuke or PHPNuke.

Both systems are relatively easy to implement, and there is a large community behind both projects. Personally I use PostNuke as I find it easier to setup and manage, but as always, YMMV.

I may be wrong, but I've used phpnuke before and am currently using postnuke
(plug http://www.randomdrivel.com)  ... it is an easy to use and quite extensible CMS/portal type tool... but I believe the multilingual power isn't on the fly translation... rather it's having different versions of the webpages... all the site text can be defined for each language set as a different set of constants.

I could be wrong, if so I apologize... but I think the sites that offer multilingual content create the content twice... I may be off on that, but feel free to correct me.

rampy

[Howard_Casto]

No acutally some of the message boards use translators similar to babblefish to translate stuff.  yabbse has a lot of plugins, there might be one available but pj would have to install it and the board would probably have to be backed up first.    

[Dave_K.]

SirPoonga, I'm sorry but I have to agree with Snaakes straight to the point response (well put).  There isn't much we can do about it (right now).   Automatic translators are only going to confuse people more.   Have you ever seen what comes out of babblefish!  Its sometimes hillarious!  Setting up a seperate sub section of the board for non-engligh is going to a) divide the community and b) be a long shot that a few individuals will put in the time needed to translate msgs back and forth.

Your topic is an honorable one, and I'm sorry if I contributed to it going off track in the other thread.  But we can't hope for anything more than a non-english speaking person posting in their native tounge on the normal boards, and hoping someone can answer back in that language.   And if the person posting is partially skilled in english, we can only hope they identify their language difficencies or they will sometimes offend (or be offended).  Its an age old problem on the Internet and nothing new to just BYOAC.

-Dave