Posts in Foreign Languages

[Uncle Gizmo]

I noticed a post today in French, (on my mobile) and I was on the verge of asking the OP to translate into English, and I noticed that my phone offered the facility to translate it instantly. Now, looking at it on my PC, again translation is done automatically and easily, with just a simple button press.

Is it time to stop discouraging posters posting in their native language?

 

[pbaldy]

I saw the post but didn't notice the option to translate offhand. I still think the burden should be on them. They are asking us for help but adding a step in our process to do so.

 

[MajP]

I have been doing one in French today and do not speak a lick https://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/posts/1675272/

 

[pbaldy]

I don't see an option to translate (FF). Or am I blind?

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Yes, that s the thread I was thinking of MajP

Pros and Cons.

Pros
Increase engagement on site.

Members with an interest in a foreign languages get the chance to improve.

Cons
You don't know what it says. Even with automatic translation, you still have to activate it. The problem is that they could be posting offensive material, spam and the like, which might get missed if it's obscured by the foreign language.

Some people don't have the facility to translate easily.

 

[Gasman]

I don't see an option to translate (FF). Or am I blind?

View attachment 82600

I think it is down to the browser.? I use Chrome and when I get to that post (2nd page) a popup appears top right asking if I want to translate.

 

[Isaac]

Being bilingual (as well as just seeing posters who have sometimes stated they used Google translate, I mean .... the tool is just SO far off in my experience ... I don't see it working out a big percentage of the time, but the attempt certainly doesn't bother me. Oftentimes it probably won't work out any worse than posters who try to speak English but speak very little..

 

[MajP]

I mean .... the tool is just SO far off in my experience ... I don't see it working out a big percentage of the time, but the attempt certainly doesn't bother me. Oftentimes it probably won't work out any worse than posters who try to speak English but speak very little..

At least for my first experience I disagree. I read the thread in the AM and it is a pretty technical thread. It automatically comes up on my android, and I could read it without problem. Translation was almost perfect IMO. I assume this is google translate. This is way better than most that I have done where the user does not speak English well. I am pretty sure everyone in the world can drop a thread into Google translate. That is all I did when not on the phone.

 

[Isaac]

At least for my first experience I disagree. I read the thread in the AM and it is a pretty technical thread. It automatically comes up on my android, and I could read it without problem. Translation was almost perfect IMO. I assume this is google translate. This is way better than most that I have done where the user does not speak English well. I am pretty sure everyone in the world can drop a thread into Google translate. That is all I did when not on the phone.

Well either way, I'm glad to hear it worked out well. As far as google translate not working very well, it might just be my experience w/Spanish...and my habit of testing it by dropping true conversational blocks into it.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

I don't see an option to translate (FF). Or am I blind?

No you're not blind! I've got Google Translate installed and Google Translate has recently started identifying foreign text and offering to translate it.

 

[jdraw]

I often ask foreign language posters to create their post in their native language, then use google translate (or other service) to translate that post to English.
I worked with a poster from South America who posted in Portuguese and asked him what he was trying to achieve. He told me his English was not so good. So I suggested:

Se você acha que seu inglês não é suficiente para a comunicação, uma coisa que você pode fazer é usar o Google Translate.
Digite sua descrição em seu idioma e peça ao tradutor do Google para mostrar a tradução em inglês. Pode não ser perfeito, mas certamente deve ser suficiente para o diálogo.

I think your English is better than many posters.

His next comment was :

Man, I almost thought that you were a brazilian too. lol.
I'm already doing this manually. When we finish the 2016 anual report, I'll work in a better BD design,and with better forms for any users to feed the BD and retrieve good information for our day to day work.
Thank you =]

Suffice to say my experience with Google Translate has been very positive --certainly more than adequate for communication on this forum. Perhaps if it more specific and extremely technical it may be a different story.

I have also done other languages with positive results.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Suffice to say my experience with Google Translate has been very positive

Same Here...

I speak "Text" to a few Spanish friends and when I'm having a particularly difficult conversation I translate my English into Spanish, and then I translate the Spanish translation back into English to see if there are any obvious misunderstandings.

I find it important to phrase my English in the simplest terms I can think of, and don't use unusual and/or colloquial expressions, and it works quite well.

I find where it does fall down is when you talk about people, it gets the his and hers and things like that messed up. I think that might be because the tendency in Spanish is to name everything male unless there is a clear female element..

 

[Isaac]

It behaves somewhat similar to people first learning to speak spanish ... it attempts too much of a word-for-word translation, which doesn't work in many cases. But it gets a point across. I sometimes read a particular online newspaper, El Sol de Parral - where some of my inlaws are from - and Google offers to translate it, the translation is about 50% right IMO. But then again, that's a particular type of written speech. It may do better in other situations.

 

[MajP]

My thread uses Dijsktra's algorithm to solve the shortest path in a directed graph. It is kind of technical with its own lexicon, most English speakers may have trouble understanding what I wrote. The OP wanted to slightly modify the construct of the table structure instead of a table of separate vertices and another table of the edges (connections) between vertices and graphs, he wanted to represent a section with a starting ID and an edge weight. I would say it is a pretty complicated question to ask in English, but here is the translation.

Hello, I have looked carefully at your proposal to use the Dijkstra algorithm, and I wonder if it is possible to make it work differently.
Rather than working in vertices + weighted links, would it be possible to have a table of segments with their length and a link table. if we make a parallel with a route we find the roads from one point to another and not the cities
Thank you in advance,

Yeah... I am sold.

 

[Galaxiom]

I use Chrome and it does a great job of translating these day. I've been really surprised how good it has become even on technical stuff. It used to be pretty bad.

 

[Isaac]

yeah it used to be a lot worse. The nice thing about Google translate like many Google products is, it's a lot like Google maps. It takes so much input from users that it's only bound to get better and better.

 

[moke123]

Is there a character number requirement for Google translate to kick in? When I go to the thread MajP mentions, it offers to translate. When I look at the new members post, which is short, there is no translation offered.

 

[jdraw]

I'm using Firefox and usually copy a foreign text; new tab to google Translate; paste; get the translation; copy; then paste accordingly.
I just found(it's probably been there for years) a Google Translator ad-on. Seems to work well.
I'm attaching a screen shot from Moke's post to show what you get when highlighting some text -then right click. It does get you to the translate function with a simple right click.

 

[khodor]

Hello, my native language is Arabic, and I studied English Language and I know how to speak it. However, I use Google Translate to communicate, but I rely on what I know from the language to correct the phrases to give the meaning I want, I think this problem is difficult to overcome at the present time

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Then again, when your wife's family speaks Cajun French, Monsieur le Google usually responds with je ne c'est pas. And sadly, in Bayou des Allemands, that doesn't work so well.