TransVolvania
Created | Updated Jun 22, 2002
OK, I give up.
The H2G2 Editors have officially announced that h2g2 will be a monoglott world. Details and reactions can be found here. I deeply regret that, as the real world that surrounds us is not monoglott at all. If you want a Guide that is valid and accepted throughout the world, you will also have to accept that there is a world outside the h2g2 headquarters. And, yes, even if this thought seems to be a bit out-dated, there is also a world outside the limits of the United Kingdom and the USA.
Lots of people have offered their help in making the Guide multilingual. This would have taken a significant amount of time which makes me think that this offer is really generous. I cannot speak for all of you who are listed below, but for my part I have made a decision:
- I will no longer be an active part of a system that seems to be afraid of everything it can't control.
- I will no longer spend my rare spare time contributing to a site that is not able to accept that there are languages and thoughts other those spoken and thought in English.
- If anybody wants to take care of the Translators' Scheme, feel free to do so, I won't.
And this is how it was meant to be:
Welcome to TransVolvania, home of the Translator Volunteers! We all know that the Guide's lingua franca still is English, but we also know that the universal nature of the Guide sometimes requires foreign and exotic languages (like German) as well. Unfortunately the hosts of our party (as the Italics usually call the BBC) want all Entries and posts to be 'reasonably moderated'. This means that some trusted people with a profound knowledge of a language1 have to look at every piece of text and to decide whether it's ok with the house rules or not. That's what we are here for.
Language Departments
There are thousands of languages and dialects all over the world, and many of them are spoken by the H2G2 researchers. So it's propably a good idea to have some language departments. We hope that the TransVol thing is going to work to everybody's complete satisfaction. If you want to volunteer, just drop a message!
Please don't be disappointed if you are not recruited as a Translator right away. This scheme is still being tested, and the only active language so far is German. We all hope that the hosts of our party will accept how things are handled here, which would allow U290, who currently is in charge of the scheme, to recruit people for other languages as well. If that happens, I guess that this page will be the first one she looks at ...
