Love CD!!! thanks for the forum, without it it would be very difficult.
I am originally from Quebec in Canada and there were a few discussions on Facebook around the fact that it was a little difficult for the non english speaking students and coach/mentors to find info on CD as the language is an obvious barrier for them.
Could we create a new folder/forums/threads/not sure how you call the categories, but something for non-english members where they could go and ask questions in their native language and then people like me could help them translate and find some info that they are looking for?
At the end of the day, some of them were discussing starting a french only type forum on a different site, but i see a lot of value in not doing that and try to encourage more of them to join the CD community (already a lot of Quebecois on here).
Anyway, i though this could be a great idea… it would open CD to french speaking folks and allow for more multi cultural exchange within FIRST community…
my opinion is that they shouldn’t be separate if possible. If it’s added for French, it should also be added for Spanish as well, as I am sure there are many teams with Spanish speaking students.
I know google translate is not good enough for many technical questions, but it would be interesting to try the Canadian way and have them post in both languages. Then they can always edit the English translation to make it better or someone can reply with a better translation. some responses will only be in English, though.
The next best thing is to post in the same forum without attempting the English translation. I’d put the language code in the thread title. “[FR] Question about XYZ”
as a test, please tell me how terrible the google translation into french is for this response:
Mon avis est qu’ils ne devraient pas être séparés si possible. Si elle est ajoutée pour le français, elle devrait également être ajoutée pour l’espagnol aussi bien, comme je suis sûr qu’il ya beaucoup d’équipes avec des étudiants hispanophones.
Je sais que google translate n’est pas assez bon pour de nombreuses questions techniques, mais il serait intéressant d’essayer la façon canadienne et de les faire publier dans les deux langues. Ensuite, ils peuvent toujours modifier la traduction en anglais pour le rendre meilleur ou quelqu’un peut répondre avec une meilleure traduction. Certaines réponses ne seront qu’en anglais.
La meilleure chose suivante est de publier dans le même forum sans essayer la traduction anglaise. Je placerais le code de langue dans le titre de fil. “[FR] Question sur XYZ”
Comme un test, s’il vous plaît dites-moi comment terrible la traduction google en français est pour cette réponse:
agree there should not be separate… i was envisioning a thread where they could post in their own language (could be including everything other than english… ) some of us that are bilingual could subscribe to the thread and when something is posted, we could help direct the question in the right forum in english… but…
I must admit, i did not realize how powerful that Google Translator is… what you posted is totally readable in french and that could work great… glad you did post it that way…
here’s the Google Translate version… very impressive…
Je suis d’accord qu’il ne devrait pas être séparé … J’étais envisageant un fil où ils pourraient publier dans leur propre langue (pourrait être tout autre que l’anglais inclus …) certains d’entre nous qui sont bilingues pourraient s’abonner au fil et quand quelque chose est affiché , Nous pourrions aider à diriger la question dans le bon forum en anglais … mais …
Je dois avouer, je n’ai pas réalisé à quel point puissant que Google Translator est … ce que vous avez posté est totalement lisible en français et qui pourrait fonctionner grand … heureux que vous l’avez postée de cette façon …
i’m curious how well it goes the other way. did you write that in French first or english first? (or did you write both and not use translate?)
Je suis curieux de savoir comment il va dans l’autre sens. Avez-vous écrit cela en français d’abord ou en anglais d’abord? (Ou avez-vous écrit les deux et ne pas utiliser traduire?)
As someone that works for a company that is based in Quebec, I deal with a lot of communications through social channels that are a mix of French only, English only, and bilingual.
I find that Google translate does a fair job of translating most technical conversations. If I reply, I reply in English and that’s OK with the native French speakers. I’d suggest submitting some posts on the regular threads in French so that everyone can see the post and hopefully there will be responses from both the French and English speakers.
Another cool feature of Google Translate is that you can paste in a link and it will translate the whole page for you. If you follow any links on the translated page, it will automatically take you to the translated pages. That might be an easier way to navigate CD in French than copying and pasting each thing individually into google translate.
if only the link following thing would also translate input boxes, they could then reply as normal in french, and google would translate during the submit. Sure browsing through translate probably works well enough, but I think OP wanted to encourage posting from more non-English native FIRSTers.
I have seen Google magically translate the titles of youtube videos to english as well from some languages.
Should be simple enough to have another regular google translate tab open from french to english and just copy and paste from that. Maybe a bit annoying, but still not terrible. The only regularly used text boxes are writing posts and searching. As far as writing posts, if they post both the original french and the google translated english, everyone will be able to answer questions and translation errors shouldn’t be too hard to catch.
Just as a note, Google Translate doesn’t work equally well for all languages. It works best for translating between English and the Germanic languages or the Romance languages, partially because of the similarities between the languages and partially because of the research devoted to translating those languages. Google Translate does not work particularly well for Indo-European languages, Japonic languages, or Sino-Tibetan languages.
I tried having a conversation in Tamil with a friend and the results were laughable.
I would say that maybe the dual-language idea would work. Post the first half of the post in your primary language, and a Google Translate into English (or the other language, if English is the primary) following that.
The side benefit is that everybody reading gets to have some understanding of the other language, whatever it is. Being able to communicate in non-native languages is actually very helpful.