The language thing

Hi all,

Let’s have this debate please. Isn’t it long past time to just operate this forum in English? The complaints have popped up in several threads now and I think we’re scaring off BOTH sides at the moment a bit. The Germans are unsure and the others are annoyed. I think we should make a decision and I think it should be to remove the German banner at the top, to translate all thread titles by hand and to not post in both languages anymore, even “official announcements” like the supermoto winter fun thread. It was fun in a small Google group but like every company aiming for growth we should have an “eye on the market” …

Votes?

Thanks for the idea :). This would be preferable, but not possible. There was a long debate before we created the new forum. We also looked at many other comparable forums out there - most approaches simply don’t work.

There are some alternatives to the current approach, none of which are better IMHO:

  • Seperate Forums
  • Seperate Categories, one in German, one in English
  • Tag the language of every post

The tag approach is the only I would consider a doable approach, but would require users tag all their posts or the admins to apply the tags. Also I am not entirely sure how much benefit this will offer.

Please feel free to post ideas on how we can improve the language thing, but I fear, posting just in one language is not an alternative.

Well if you say it was debated and rejected then I’ll take that as the Admin decision and move on. Not liking it, but alright.

Would you be open to sharing your/our user statistics? How many people are already coming in from non-DE? Is the share growing?

I think for now I’ll just answer all the questions in English and see if there’s any pushback from the Germans. Hope that’s ok

I’m the app author & administrator and communicate in English. :slightly_smiling_face:

Everyone can use any language, Google Translate is one tab away.

An issue is that cannot search easily in forum in foreign languages.

Es ist ein kurviger.DE Forum, also sollte Deutsch die Hauptsprache sein.

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Copying @boldtrn’s answer from old forum:

"Kurviger is a world-wide project and to make it easier for everyone to communicate it is preferred to write in English.
We understand that many people don’t feel comfortable writing English. So any other language is accepted as well :)."

The international share is growing, the majority is still German :slight_smile:.

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Sorry aber da kann ich dir in keinster Weise zustimmen, der Domain-Name ist doch ziemlich arbiträr, das hat meistens nichts mit der Intention des Produktes oder des Herstellers zu tun (bedenke nur mal die ganzen Podcast/Musik-Seiten, die eine .fm Domain haben und nichts mit Mikronesien zu tun haben).

Wichtig ist wo das Produkt hin soll, welchen Markt es erreichen soll. Kurviger ist international und der Developer (der hier fleißigst Hand an den Support legt :clap::clap: @devemux86) spricht und sucht Englisch.
Aber ich kann mit Gemischtbetrieb leben, ist jetzt eben erstmal so. Ich will ja auch wirklich dass Kurviger floriert, muss mir jetzt auch selbst merken einfach weiter offen und freundlich zu bleiben, nicht beleidigt zu sein und zweisprachig zu supporten
solang bis Robin sich eines Besseren besinnt :wink:

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Banner at the head / Banner am Kopf

EN: This is a global forum. It is recomended to write in english. Often the writers are doing it. But there is a problem! Some writers (including the developers) sometimes are using abbreviations and/or (special?) grammatic to shorten the text. Readers who are not native english speaking then often have problems to understand what the writer will comunicate to the reader. Often the readers are not familiar with the theme or story. This makes it hard to understand even when there is used simple english. But then the message is not to understand when text shortening abbreviations and grammatics are used.
Therefore: In the banner please add a note: “Use simple grammatics, avoid abbreviations!” or “For easier understanding of non native english speaking readers please use simple grammatics and avoid abbreviations!” or a similar text.

DE: Dies ist ein weltweites Forum. Es wird empfohlen, in englisch zu schreiben. Oft machen die Schreiber dies. Aber es gibt ein Problem! Einige Schreiber (einschliesslich der Entwickler) jedoch benutzen Abkürzungen und/oder (spezielle?) Grammatik um den Text kurz zu halten. Von Natur aus nicht englisch sprechende Leser haben dann oft das Problem, zu verstehen, was der Schreiber dem Leser mitteilen will. Oft ist der Leser nicht mit dem Thema vertraut. Dies erschwert es das Thema zu verstehen, selbst bei einfach geschriebenem englisch. Aber die Nachricht ist unverständlich wenn Text verkürzende Abkürzungen und Grammatik verwendet werden.
Deshalb: Im Banner bitte einen Hinweis ergänzen: “Benutze einfache Grammatik, vermeide Abkürzungen!” oder “Für nicht englisch sprechende Leser und leichteres Verstehen bitte einfache Grammatik und keine Abkürzungen benutzen!” oder einen ähnlichen Text.

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Thanks for the proposal. I can see your point. The language is an issue.

Do you think people will change their writing style based on the banner?

I will try to use less abbreviations in the forum :slight_smile:.

Maybe we could do something like this?

Avoiding complex phrases and abbreviations will help non native speakers to understand your words.

On the other hand, this will make the banner text quite long and will lead to more people simply ignoring it.

That’s a good point.

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A hint can make the writer aware that his writing style has an influence on readability. Not every writer will change his style. But it would be a big gain if the power users would follow the hint in their contributions and answers.

Therefore it would be worth to add your proposal to the english text in the banner. To add only in english could be a compromise to avoid text in the banner. Then there is a message for the english writing people. They only have to do it and the global usability and readability of the forum will be increased. Misunderstandings and requests for further information could be reduced.

As a first step, I changed the post here: Welcome, please read first!

That what first posters are supposed to read first :slight_smile:.

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Hi,
ware es möglich, einen “Übersetzung hinzufügen” Knopf ins Forum zu bauen?
Dieser sollte den geschriebenen Text z. B. über DeepL auf Englisch übersetzen und hinten nochmal anfügen.
Das würde das manuelle Kopieren, dann bei DeepL einfügen, dann die Übersetzung aus DeepL wieder einfügen, mit einem Knopfdruck erledigen.

Ciao Markus

Hi,
would it be possible to add a “Add translation” button to the forum?
This should translate the written text e.g. via DeepL into English and add it again at the end.
That would do the manual copying, then pasting at DeepL, then pasting the translation from DeepL again, with one click of a button.

Ciao Markus

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That depends if the forum software has such a plugin provided for free to the forum users.
EDIT: The translate API is not free.

In any case Chromium browsers have integrated Google Translate and all browsers have extensions for translation, so it’s already very easy for everyone to use them.

You can see more details in an older discussion:

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Nur als Tipp:
Eigentlich macht DeepL das in den neueren Versionen automatisch!
Also, genau wie jetzt hier:

  1. Zu übersetzenden Text markieren,
  2. zweimal Strg-c drücken, das Übersetzungs-Fenster im Browser öffnet sich,
  3. evtl. die Zielsprache zu “Englisch” korrigieren, falls nicht schon vorgewählt,
  4. auf “Kopieren” klicken (NICHT auf “Einfügen”, da man ja den Originaltext zusätzlich erhalten will,
  5. einfügen - fertig.

Just a tip:
Actually DeepL does this automatically in the newer versions!
So, I just did it here:

  1. Select the text to be translated,
  2. press Ctrl-c twice, the translation window in the browser will open,
  3. if necessary correct the target language to “English”, if not already preselected,
  4. click on “Copy”,
  5. insert - done.

Vorausgesetzt man hat DeepL installiert? Oder ist das Browser abhängig? :thinking:

Provided you have DeepL installed? Or is the browser dependent? :thinking:

Hi,
meistens surfe ich im Forum mit meinem Android Tablet , da ist das hin- und herkopieren unkomfortabler.

Ciao Markus

Hi,
most of the time I surf the forum with my Android tablet, copying back and forth is less comfortable.

Ciao Markus

The translate API of Discourse forum software’s translator plugin is not free.

You can use Chrome’s integrated translator or an extension in any browser:

Hi,
there have been discussions in the old forum, their result - as far as I understood - was to post in 2 languages, and many user do so.
There is also a similar thread in new forum:

Therefore I thought about a possibility to reduce the number of steps to post in German and English. I am lazy - so I usually write the text of one language (changes if I start German or English, depending on previous written language, mood, weather, … :wink:), afterwards I use a translator to get the text in 2nd language, which I usually check / correct.

Furthermore - from my point of view - the google translation is faulty quite often and leads to misunderstanding, therefore I prefer DeepL.

I do not want to restart the language discussion, just a question to devemux : Is your proposal, that each “writer” posts in his/her native language, and all readers use an translator during reading, if necessary?

And - of course - I do not want to insist on a button

Thanks and regards

Markus