OK I did I a search and found nothing so ...

how about a foreign language section
for those whose English is very shaky at best.
I realise there are moderation issues
but
and I know LQ could never cater for every language on the planet
but what about some of the other major languages
eg
Chinese, German, Spanish, Arabic
its just a thought

floppy

This would be kind of rough to implement, and aside from that, as stated, would be difficult to moderate. My suggestion, see if google or babelfish can translate the page.

A spin on scuzzman's suggestion:
Maybe Jeremy can provide a link with a drop down (for the translation to/from) at the bottom of the pages that link the page into google's URL translator, for example, this page from English into German:
http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

it would certainly require a bit of coding, but maybe it could be on the clipboard for future versions of LQ?

Cool

Well, I'm really annoyed that you didn't include French as a widely used language, because there are plenty of French Linux users and plenty of people who do use French as a first or second language (I mean lots of African countries and also some in the Far East - we have a colonial past (unfortunately) here, as well.)
Don't forget that Mandrake is basically a "French-based" distro and is still the most widely-referred to distro.

Well just my two cents, anyway

There is nice translator online at
http://www.systransoft.com/
I use it from time to time
Fast

Google's translations are not so good actually.

I think the issue is not online translations but more that - could Jeremy find some trustworthy people, who are fluent in English and another language, and have the linux knowledge one would expect of a moderator.

floppy

Being fluent in both English and the particular language , as well as being trustworthy , shouldn't be the problem ; The pool is big enough here.

But a mod doesn't need to have a Trickykid-like Linux-knowledge ; a decent insight in human behaviour is way more important for the job.
It tends to be mutually exclusive , as far as I have witnessed.....

As regarding the original topic : I don't think , having separate language forums is a good Idea(tm) ; The Opera-forums have them and as far as I can see , it's not contributing enough to warrant the effort.

Having separate forums for each language wouldn't be very scalable/maintainable. The idea of including a dropdown that links to an online translator is interesting though. Is the Google one "good enough" to be useful in this context?

--jeremy

From what little I've used it (to translate from anything to English) I've had about 70% luck with it, meaning, about 70% of some of the pages translate well, occasionally I get the original word showing up, or if the page is long, the lower portion didn't seem to get put through the "translator".



Cool

Google's translation is in my experience, very clunky and awkward. But I suppose that it is a workable option at this point till we have better options.

scalability is certainly an issue

The thing with online translations is tho
The poor bloke from outer centaurie
posting an innocent Q
and ending up insulting everyones mom / mum
and starting WW III
or what about real technical stuff

perhaps if one did use an online translation
with a note that he/she did
and the original
then someone fluent in both English and the other
might spot any mis-translations

hmmm
just a thought
floppy

I like the idea of having questions more readily available to members who don't have English as a first or second language. The "drop down translator" option is more workable than a foreign language forum because:
a foreign language forum would need a moderator fluent in each language and would cut out a large percentage of our members - my French and German are very rusty at best and would mean that I could not participate in the discussions on that forum (to use me as an example).
also, if a member posted a question in French only, the person with the answer may not be able to understand the question, which means that the original poster would be frustrated that they got no answer.
The other option would be to say that you can post in a non-nglish language, but you have to do a duplicate post (in the same thread) in English, or the boards become useless - some of our members do that already.

Hi,
I would just like to refer to another great forum, which is dedicated to Mépis and called Mepislovers.org
They do have Foreign language forums (i.e. in French and Spanish) and that doesn't seem to be a problem : I think it gives more opportunity
for someone not fluent in English to have a better way to ask his/her question in a language he/she feels more at ease with.

Well, as it is for one OS only, perhaps it's more easily doable.
Just my opinion, really.
Cheers

Hmmm
if you did that
you wouldnt be able to do much more than an
equivalent Linux-general for each language
hmmm


floppy