[Foundation-l] multilingual mailing list

[Milos Rancic]

Let's assume that you don't know English. I don't know Dutch and
Google Translator is my only option. (Similarities with English are
not so big, while my knowledge of German is so poor, that it's not
useful at all.)

2011/3/14 Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org>:
> Ik denk dat dat niet helemaal eerlijk is om zo te stellen - als jij er
> wat moeite voor zou doen, zou je de meeste andere talen ook prima
> begrijpen. Hetzij door gewoon langzaam te lezen, hetzij door
> vertaalprogramma's die op het internet beschikbaar zijn te gebruiken.

Sometimes yes, sometimes not. Machine translation systems are not
quite good, as well as I am definitely not able to understand Dutch by
reading it slowly.

> Het belangrijkste bij meertalige maillijsten is niet zozeer dat mensen
> er gebruik van moeten maken, maar juist dat er een acceptatie is en
> een positieve atmosfeer in het geval dat iemand besluit er gebruik van
> te maken. Wanneer je een bericht vervolgens niet begrijpt, kun je
> natuurlijk nog altijd vragen om een toelichting.

I agree here partially. Yes, I agree that if someone wants to say
something very important (at least to him or to her) and she or he is
able to say something just in some other language than English -- yes,
it should be said in other language. However, the most of conversation
here is not on that level. It is much about giving not so crucial
arguments about many things, like your and my points in those two
emails are.

> Het enige lastige van meertalige lijsten is dat spelfouten ineens veel
> grotere consequenties hebben.

If Google Translator has given the right sentence structure, this
sentence is not so structurally complex. However, translation is not
guessable. May you word your sentence in some other way? (Translation
is: The only tricky multilingual spelling lists is that suddenly many
greater consequences. )

* * *

I've spent 20 minutes for writing the part above. I used the most of
the time for trying to understand your words better.

It could be an interesting multilingual practice to talk this way. OK,
it would be better if I chose Serbian instead of English. Maybe we
should try, actually.

But, note that it would require much more time for communication,
which requires much more dedicated persons.

But, again, we don't need to be very fast and very efficient. (I am
serious about that.) Also, machine translation engines will become
just better and better. So, we will be spending less and less time in
misunderstanding each other. And it would calm down atmosphere:
everybody will think that it could be misunderstanding somewhere.