h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Kühl

So you wanna swear foreign? Try this for size

http://www.insults.net/html/world/index.html

Keine Chance, dieses übersetzte dann zu erhalten




go on have a go!
this is boaring me now!

"sufficiently precise to say whether a rude word was the equivalent of crikey or something much ruder"
I agree which is why I asked if they "try" and use on-line translation tools "before" making the "decision" to pass/fail - sometimes you get a good translation sometimes you are left scratching your head and in the latter case failure until (if ever) it can be moderated by a human who understands the post is I think perfectly acceptable in the case of foreign language posts.

The way to endure summer in England is to have it framed and glazed in a comfortable room
Horace Walpole 1717-1797

so good that one, I approve!

Ever the impractical, HappyDude

Using online translations is - yet again - very time consuming. Moderation takes enough time out of our day and allowing non-English postings would only increase that - and increase the potential for mischief. We're quite clear about this in the House Rules, and we have no inclination to change this, for the many reasons already discussed.

As a consession, we have already said that if an accurate translation is provided in the same posting as the non-English text, then we may be more inclined to let it by - but this is not an invitation for anyone to start testing the system, so please don't or we will fail the lot.

As we've said elsewhere on many occasions, h2g2 is about sharing knowledge - as everyone who uses the site can speak English to some degree, and as English is the most widespread language in the world, why alienate or exclude others by using a language that they might not understand?

>As we've said elsewhere on many occasions, h2g2 is about sharing knowledge<

And that's what the projects dealing with foreign languages on here are about as well: sharing knowledge...

loup

"However, as the in-house resources for translating non-English is limited, the posting may well be failed outright."

Jimster, one day you should read <./>DontPanic-Moderation#5</.> and then either change the houserules and faq or your way of treating non-English posts. Would make it simpler for all if you followed the rules no matter if they are as now or as you would like them to be.

This thread seems to be full of people taking the p!ss, those having a little fun, those taking things w a a a y to seriously, and italics, etc. dodging and being useful as usual.

Entertaining, though.

Reply to post 186, Jimster.

"English is the most widespread language in the world."

Is it, is it really? Not Spanish? Not forgetting the old chesnut, Chinese.

English is the most widespread language on the World Wide Web, maybe.

No, I believe that is correct. More *people* may speak Spanish or Chinese, but the English language is more widespread. More countries in more farflung countries speak English, the official language of flight is English, and the most prevalent language on the web is English. Plus the most common second language is English.

>> This thread seems to be full of people taking the p!ss, those having a little fun, those taking things w a a a y to seriously, and italics, etc. dodging and being useful as usual. <<

You forgot the 'thick' and those would have us think they are 'thick' (a nasty bunch). But yeah. It's almost like the good old days.

~jwf~

I think we have a duty to question everthing, even ambiguity itself. Else we would all be sat believing the Sun revolves round a flat Earth...

If the *resourses* can not read *foreign*, how does *resources* know its *foreign*, not just 'adopted' words in a compound language?

Apparent reliance is on *foreign* language users, that are not, by the rules allowed to post in *foreign* to complain through use of the yikes system. Yet the *resources* are not always able to check due to lack of *resources* or ability of *resources* or over use of yikes.

Thank goodness for English.

Tea and toast everyone?

*Goes to put kettle on*

In reply to Ottox, re: <./>DontPanic-Moderation#5 </.>.

Good point - that is out of date now as, if we get a complaint regarding non-English content, we can't just leave it hidden or else it'll cause a bottleneck - as happened with the postings that started this thread in the first place. The content still won't be deleted though, simply hidden - and the only way to hide it is to 'fail' it, so that the Researcher concerned can be nformed by automated email.

If, in the future, there was a change in overall BBC Community policy, or if we suddenly got resources to translate all these posts (and if we had the inclination to go looking for them), we'd be able to restore the postings straight away as they're still there.

I've edited that section it make this a little clearer. It still says pretty much the same thing though. Thanks for alerting us to this, Ottox. This must have been missed during the changeover last September.

Traveller in Time on his head
"How about a volunteer group translating mysterious postings. Their communication should be hidden either external or in private conversations. But it could work? "

Never, it'll never work, not in a million years will it work, it's........IT's just too simple!

My god, it moves, is it alive?

Yea Jim, but not as we know it!

Traveller in Time... Hi...

In Posting 196, you said:

>How about a volunteer group translating mysterious postings. Their communication should be hidden either external or in private conversations.<

Definitely a good idea and the service could be used for the whole BBCi, with volunteers being recruited from the DNA sites like for the BBCiTesters Group...

All [ perhaps a bit more than that, but still...] would be needed is that the allegedly "offending" part of the foreign posting be err posted to the volunteers's Yahoo group...

Indicating in the subject line which language the posting is in would also mean that those who speak/understand the language will have a look asap and confirm if it is rude/offensive or not...

Then, not knowing too much about the origin of the posting [as in: who posted it etc..], might also help keeping a relative degree of fairness...


loup

REF: Posting 186...

>Moderation takes enough time out of our day and allowing non-English postings would only increase that - and increase the potential for mischief. We're quite clear about this in the House Rules, and we have no inclination to change this, for the many reasons already discussed.<

Jimster...

Perhaps if people genuinely concerned about a foreign posting took the time to ask questions _before_ shooting first [as in: checking with someone knowing the lingo, or using free online translation facilities, before yikesing it], moderation activities regarding non-English postings would not be so time consuming...

My main problem with this thread is that when the new moderation system was still a pilot scheme, people were told not to yikes foreign posting unless they were believed to be offensive/rude/etc...
Now, it seems that people are more than welcome to yikes _any_ posting with foreign words in them...

Which means that, while anyone could get away with posting "you're a " to me because they've used the smiley instead of an offending word [even so the insulting meaning of the post will still be understood by me], someone wanting to be nice to me and posting a greeting in my native tongue could be modded...

>As a consession, we have already said that if an accurate translation is provided in the same posting as the non-English text, then we may be more inclined to let it by<

Fine... And better than nothing I suppose, but in some cases translation cannot be provided in the _same_ posting...
For example, if someone goes to the h2g2 French Language HelpDesk and asks what does a specific sentence in French mean in English, their post could be _automatically_ modded because someone thought it would be a "good" idea to yikes it...

-------------------------------------

Random replies:

Regarding taking this issue seriously... Yep, I do take it seriously...
I, somehow, don't find the idea of being modded because I have been helping other h2g2 Researchers with my language [sharing knowledge] funny at all...


Regarding Collective:

Interesting somehow, as many reviews there are about foreign books and films and quite a few titles are in a foreign language [sometimes without a translation available next to it]...



loup

"How about a volunteer group translating mysterious postings. Their communication should be hidden either external or in private conversations. But it could work? "

No, it couldn't work. How do I know this? Because I tried it when I first started work on h2g2. I was a Researcher here pre-Rupert, and the three things that I knew that annoyed people most about the change to BBC ownership where

1)being post-moderated
2)losing all their pictures
3)only being able to post in English

Number 1 changed around 10 months after I started (I can take no credit for this, it was the work of other members of staff).

Number 2 - I set up the volunteer CA group

Number 3 - I took over the (pilot) volunteer Translator group that Peta had set up.

Nobody knows (well, a few people might remember) that there is a translator group because it failed (you'll find the badge if you look hard enough). Only one of the volunteers (hurrah for Bossel) checked any content for us. There's no sense in flogging a dead horse, so I stopped nagging them to do it and stopped creating work for myself. And started the CAs instead. Who are doing bloody brilliantly, and it's the piece of work on h2g2 that I am most proud of.

I would have gone back to it, and recruited some new volunteers once the CAs were running like clockwork, but the BBC saw fit to reallocate the staff. There are no longer enough people to risk repeating a failed experiment.