--- On Mon, 2/2/09, Lije Carpenter <[email protected]> wrote:
> Perhaps a workable solution would be
> for multilingual volunteers to offer their help in having a
> support wiki that translates the FAQs (et al) for users who
> are primary speakers of languages other than English?
If you're talking about an automatic translation, fair enough, and I have no
opinion either way.
If you're talking about having people translate the FAQ / wiki / other
documentation into another language, then there are no words that will
adequately describe how bad I think this idea is.
At some point last year, during one or other of LJ's crisises, I had occasion
to consult the the FAQ. The info I was getting was wrong and/or out of date.
And I knew this because it didn't match the info I was seeing quoted elsewhere
both in friends' LJs and official LJ posts. This was important info, very
relevant to the workings of the site/policy changes etc. And I couldn't find
it. The reason? I had my language settings on LJ set to English (UK). This is
not the same as English apparently.
I was unhappy that the FAQ was out of date, but I understood that the
translation was a volunteer effort, so that wasn't main focus of my anger.
(Though, the fact that a translation was needed for English to UK English? Was
another sore point.)
No, the root of my anger was that I had absolutely no way of:
a) knowing that what I was viewing was an out of date FAQ (yes, the FAQs all
have a 'last updated' date, but I had no reason to assume that what I was
seeing wasn't the most up to date info. [Except, in this case, I had been told
elsewhere.]) and
b) (easily) seeing the correct FAQ (I'm pretty sure that this was before the
drop down menu to change your language that you can now find on LJ's footer,
but the footer language drop down is neither here nor there). There is nothing
that says that the most up-to-date FAQ is the English version. And worse, I had
no reason to believe that I *wasn't* seeing the 'English' version.
So yes. I understand that I'm very lucky that my first language is English, and
that DW is English based, and this obviously will be influencing me. But I
still say that correct info in your non-native language is better than out of
date/incorrect info in your native/first language.
If there must be a translation. Then *every single page* *must* include the
fact that this may lag behind the English version and a link to the
English/most up to date version.
Loriel
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