Are posts required to be in English?

Thread Starter

DMahalko

Joined Oct 5, 2008
189
Does it matter if there's a mix of English and other languages on this forum? Nothing comes up in the TOS about 'English' or 'language'.

I see these people asking really difficult questions in really poorly written English, and I figure, these people have be in some other country where English is not their native language.

I do not understand why these people do not just try posting their question in their native tongue so it's easier for them to explain the issue at hand.

There are probably other people around here who know their language, to reply in a clear manner.


(Yep, this is about them UPS/inverter threads.)
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Yes. This is an English speaking forum. We get many people using Google translators, and we do cut OPs slack on bad English (well, most of us). If the mods can not understand the posts, how can we do our jobs? It could also encourage some bad practices, such as being a drop point for unsavory types for nefarious messages. Two of our moderators use English as a second language.

ElectroTech had a forum for non English threads.
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,764
I do not use it frequently but out of curiosity, checked many times how Google translator performs.

It does not very well with "literary" texts and it is even bad dealing with rather informal language but when it comes to technical texts (little blah blah blah) it does remarkably well.

As said, I would suggest the OP to write his post in his own native language avoiding colourful expressions that add little or nothing to the technical substance and then passing it through the translator.

In another forum (English language as well), there is a very clever EE who got fame of knowing many languages just simply by using Google translator to understand questions in foreing languages.
 

takao21203

Joined Apr 28, 2012
3,702
Translation software only works correctly for very simple sentences.
It will fail very likely for abstract concepts.

In reverse (towards your primary language) it will often work somehow, so you will have at least an idea about the topic.

If the content suffers from poor wording in the original language, translation software will make it worse.

By the way, I am not a bot, and I never used translation software to create forum posts in english language.

In case of doubt, a brief summary should be written in english according to ability, and capabilities of translation software (there is for instance microsofttranslator.com online). Then additional details or difficult explanations are added in the OPs native language.

This however only makes sense if the problem is genuine or puts up genuine questions, and if it is possible to give "good" answers. If the question or problem as such are not totally clear to the OP, sometimes a thread with no reply, poor replies or no good solution will result.
 

R!f@@

Joined Apr 2, 2009
9,918
<snip>
(The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.)
:D
 
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takao21203

Joined Apr 28, 2012
3,702
The translation software only functions for a very simple sentence definitely.

-> good understanding

Probably it fails for an abstract concept.

-> Weird but it is valid english

On the contrary, even if you have few them in a thing (towards your main words) of to often act somehow; about the topic have a plan.

-> Forget about it
 

R!f@@

Joined Apr 2, 2009
9,918
What the ?!!!? LMAOF :D

Hey , tht's not fair. I use my friggin tongue and my post goes to the trash. What gives.?

Atleast u cud hav asked me to translate. I did not say anything offensive.
 

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
I 'm sure that you were just chit-chatting, but the point is that this is AN ENGLISH FORUM PEOPLE!

I couldn't cross my words towards the OP and let you speak Maldivian (is that correct?)
 

DerStrom8

Joined Feb 20, 2011
2,390
I do not use it frequently but out of curiosity, checked many times how Google translator performs.

It does not very well with "literary" texts and it is even bad dealing with rather informal language but when it comes to technical texts (little blah blah blah) it does remarkably well.

As said, I would suggest the OP to write his post in his own native language avoiding colourful expressions that add little or nothing to the technical substance and then passing it through the translator.
Google Translate is the best translator I've found. However, it seems to only work well with languages stemming from Latin: English, Spanish, French, Italian, and a few others. It even works well translating to/from German. But when you go into non-western languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and Thai, it does not do very well.
 
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