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[a1s]

The main site has been translated into 9 languages already. 10 more are awaiting their turn, so it would only be fair to call the site multilingual (of many languages) in addition to multinational (of many nations) wouldn't it?
Off course I'm not proposing to translate the whole forum to different languages (I used to be a translator myself, so I know what a pain in the fifth point it would be), what I propose is much simpler: opening special parts of forum for the supported languages, so that our non English members could get part of the support our community provides. some will say that they can do it already, however I've seen a few threads where those people tried to post, to my deep shock the same member who are so tolerant and kind (even to such antisocial elements as the recent spammer adamaster who despite breaking every rule in existence was still given more than her fair share of chances) were saying things that could be summarized in the phrase "speak our language go get lost, @sshole! :angry: ", the same people who discuss subway bombings thousands of miles away as if they happened next door, were seemingly forgetting that more than 80% of world population does NOT speak English.
So let me say what exactly I'm proposing:
1) Subsection on the forum for each language of the site.
2) A mod who speaks the language (preferably native speaker) for each one.
3) A link from the main page in each language to this forum.
4?) Possibly cookies for the people involved

[Danny252]

damn my native-englishness. I dont get cookies :'(
ell, lets see if the admins agree/like it.. Not one admin is english, I believe..

[A. J. Raffles]

I can hardly imagine that over 80% of the world's population don't speak English at all.:blink: You mean less than 20% speak it as their first language, right?

Well, fair enough, it's a great idea to have multilingual forums, obviously, but there'll be an awful lot of work involved, and for some languages the whole thing may not be terribly efficient. For example, I highly doubt there's more than about half a dozen people from Iceland (active posters, I mean), so poor Puffin might end up soliloquising half of the time.
The other reason why I'm not entirely convinced of the multilingual forums idea is that it would divide people into language groups, and if it catches on, we could end up with several sub-communities instead of one, with the Romanians posting in the Romanian section, the Spanish-speakers posting in the Spanish section and so on. Even somebody as multilingual as Sebatianos would only understand what was going on in about half of the forums.
Thirdly, even if we were going to add only two forums per foreign language currently represented on the site (one for game discussions and one for general chit-chat), that would mean eighteen additional forums, so the Abandonia forums would be twice as big. Maybe I'm being a bit too negative here, but I've never seen such a huge forum that worked well.

[Tom Henrik]

I agree that it would make the site more multilingual, and it would be a great thing for those who can't read and write English, but...

For this to work, we need different admin and moderator team for every forum. These would have to be just as effecient and trustworthy as the ones we currently have. Without constant supervision each of these forums could easily be turned into flamefests, warez links and worse. I know that I ain't gonna even look at another forum, less moderate it. As we will have an incredibly hard time keeping additional forums tidy, we would have to trust all the new teams completely and without questions. Not to mention that all forums would need to start from scratch. That means, making all subforums, and a game topic for each individual game.

When all that is done, the next thing would be to find new server deals, as each forum would need an effiecient server. This means, we would need more money to keep the new forums alive.

All in all... a LOT of work, just to make the site more multilingual. We ARE already multicultural. The reason why the mainsite and the reviews are translated is to make everything understandable for people all over the world. The forum is the common meeting-ground for all the user of the site, and if someone needs something answered (and doesn't write English), we have a standing rule that someone else jumps in and translate it, so that everyone can understand it and help the newcomer.

My point is... the site and forum is multicultural, as we help each other out regardless of language, origin, religion and skin-colour. What would actually make us less multicultural would be to seperate and say "Spanish natives here, English natives there, and you Swedes get waaaaay over there!"

Anyways... I've placed a remark for Kosta in the admin forum, it is his site and his decision.

[Scarface]

I agree and I don't think is needed a new topic for every single game... just new sections for every language

[Tom Henrik]

That would, as A.J. Raffles pointed out, create a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge forum, that would be toooooo big for any sensible human being. IF we were to create other language based forum, they would be seperate forum with their own internet address.

[Shrek]

well, it might be true that 80% of the world population doesn' t speak english at all, but i bet more than 90% of the people that uses internet and posts at foruns has the minimum requirements to understand and write in english (i ' m one of these - i think)

also, let me place a little example to see if i can explain my point of view: Joselito, a spanish guy (it can be from another country if you wish so :whistle: and with another name ) has some trouble running some software or some game and decides to open a topic in the spanish forum, written in spanish, because he doesn' t feel at ease writting in english. imagine now that half of the members know the answer but they don' t understand spanish. how can Joselito solve his problem?

for that, i don' t agree completely with the idea, but it could work for some sub-sections like 3xbla.

[A. J. Raffles]

So Joselito can spam in Spanish, you mean?:P

[a1s]

Originally posted by Shrek@Aug 5 2005, 08:25 PM
well, it might be true that 80% of the world population doesn' t speak english at all, but i bet more than 90% of the people that uses internet and posts at foruns has the minimum requirements to understand and write in english (i ' m one of these* * - i think)

that is exactly the thing- you (unconciously) believe that everyone else is genraly like you. in psychology this is called "projection", and it actualy helps you to understand other peoples goals and motivatios, but it doesn't allways work. I don't know the exact figures, but I think it should be somwhere in the region of 60-80%.

Originally posted by Shrek@Aug 5 2005, 08:25 PM
also, let me place a little example to see if i can explain my point of view: Joselito, a spanish guy (it can be from another country if you wish so :whistle: and with another name ) has some trouble running some software or some game and decides to open a topic in the spanish forum, written in spanish, because he doesn' t feel at ease writting in english. imagine now that half of the members know the answer but they don' t understand spanish. how can Joselito solve his problem?

that is one of the parts of the plan. you see even with the flow of new visitors there will probably be no more than 100 new members (with more than 1 post), so maybe 5 (or even less) will actualy become active posters. If Joselito wants a fast and efficient soultion he will post in english (people who come to this site are on the average smarter than 100 IQ, so they can think logicaly). that will mean that large part of the spanish comunity will have constant contact with the rest of the forum (which will prevent cultural satgnation, or whatecer it's called), and the rest will recieve help from people who actualy understand them.

about the size issues: when I satrted the topic I meant that laguges get their subsections (on the scale of "Site comments/suggestions", "Requests", or "3xBlah"), not subforums (on the scale of "Abandonia.com", "Games" or "Chatterbox"), and that they are kept small but tidy. the number of mods will be increased proportionaly (so moding will remain on present level), and I don't really think that much programing work will be needed after the initial setup of the sections. BTW it seems that the forum allready supports forgein fonts (the ones I've personaly seen and can remeber now are: Russian, Romanan, Geraman and Icelandian.), so you don't have to worry about that. Allso since we don't expect too much new visitors it shouldn't realy kill our bandwidth either.

[A. J. Raffles]

Originally posted by Romano@Aug 5 2005, 09:43 PM
I am so happy that Congress decided with only one vote more that English will be official language of new born States and not German. Otherwise we will now learn German using the internet, and I am not shure if it will be so easy... :whistle:

That's a myth, actually. There were quite a lot of German immigrants, but nobody ever seriously considered making German the official language of the US.