Multi lingual forum

Congratulations to the EOS team on this innovation. Don't know how long it's been there (bottom of left hand column) but I've only just noticed it. Don't know how you do it - you must have a full time team of translators to keep up with all the posts, because from what I can make out, this is no internet based translator. I'm a little disappointed that I can't view my work in Japanese at the moment, and a little puzzled why Japanese is on the list at all - surely Russian or Romanian would be more likely to be worthwhile? Anyway, whatever your plans for the site are, I wish you all the best of luck with it. Very impressed.

Thanks Roberto.  We have been working very hard on this for the past few months.  We're just testing some of the languages at the moment and we'll have about 40 languages available by next month!

We'll give more details about it soon.

Justin 

today Spain...........tomorrow THE WORLD !!!!!!!!

I can see this becoming an invaluable resource for community forums where communication between different nationalities can be a problem. I wish you all the success you deserve for such a development.

Brilliant idea Justin, must bring you lots more members,especially those wanting to buy in Spain.  Good luck with all your new plans for the future.

WARNING: as of today, this forum is available to speakers of 50  different languages. So be very careful what you say about your non-English speaking neighbours, who hitherto would have been unable to read what you say about them!

Congratulations again to the EOS team on this amazing innovation.

 Laten we het eens uitproberen. Helaas zijn mijn Chinees en Russisch wat roestig, maar een van de eerste testtalen beheers ik uitstekend. Het zou natuurlijk een enorme doorbraak zijn als we eindelijk Babylon's erfenis konden slechten, maar ik vrees dat dit met de huidige stand van techniek nog onmogelijk is. Automatisch vertalen is een schier hopeloze uitdaging omdat met name de grammatica uiterst lastig om te zetten is naar een ander taal systeem. 

Maar goed laten we eens kijken wat er van deze post overblijft als de automaat zijn werk gedaan heeft (tenzij natuurlijk Justin zelf alle vertalingen handmatig doet en de laatste maanden hard bezig is geweest om vijftig talen te leren :)

Max.

A second attempt after re logged in as self-appointed Dutch-speaking:

Max.

OK, so we've established that Justin needs to brush up on his Dutch and/or English a little, or get himself a new improved version of the babel fish, but hey! I'd say that's good enough for the majority to understand the gist of it.

I think most native English speakers are fairly used to deciphering poor translations, since almost anywhere we go in the world we can find amusing attempts on the back of hotel room doors (example: "Please leave your values at the front desk"; "You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid" etc. etc.) Judging by my own feeble attempts at mastering Spanish, Spaniards are also fairly accepting of foreigners bastardizing their language. But I wonder about other nationalities? In my experience, the French can be particularly pedantic about inaccurate attempts at their language, so if a machine makes a slight grammatical error when translating, will they give that typical Gallic shrug and proclaim that they don't understand?

But I'm looking forward to seeing posts that have clearly been translated from their original version. Partly for the sheer amusement of bad translation, but mainly because it will be very interesting to see additional input on the forum from people who may have a slightly different perspective on life in Spain.

One small suggestion to EOS if I may? How about a flag in member's profiles showing what language they normally post in? Otherwise we may never know whether they are being poorly translated, or if they are just plain stupid and illiterate!

This was the original post if I translate it myself:

 Let's try this. Unfortunately my Chinese and Russian are a bit rusty, but I happen to command one of the first tested languages very well. It would of course be a huge breakthrough if we could finally get rid of Babylon's legacy, but I fear that this will be impossible considering the current state of technology. Automatic translations are sheer impossible because especially the grammar differences are hard to convert to another language.

 Hi Roberto,

I agree to your general statement. At least it makes EOS readable for the non-English which is a huge improvement for the community forums. As for stating their opinions in their native language I doubt it would work well. If your post looks stupid often the opinion of the poster is not taken seriously. 

Your suggestion about a flag or something to show what the original language was is excellent. 

(and unfortunately I have never visited these hotels where you could take advantage of the chambermaid; could you PM me a list of these hotels :))

Max.

Sorry, I don't remember the name of the hotel, but it was right next to the dry cleaners in Bangkok with the sign "drop your trousers here for the best results".

 That's not very convenient; these hotels should merge!