[Erkson]

I would like to comment about Fred's message : "BBO translation project", but when I click on 'Quote' or 'Add reply' I get this message :
"Sorry, you do not have permission to reply to that topic "

I could begin another thread but I don't want before making sure it is Fred's will that there is no comments about his message.

Erkson

[fred]

I have no idea what is going on. Replies are
certainly welcome.

Fred

[Erkson]

fred, on May 14 2004, 04:00 AM, said:

I have no idea what is going on. Replies are
certainly welcome.

Fred

Hi, Fred.

I confirm that when I try to quote and add a reply to every message in the "BBO Announcement and Special Events" section, I get that same message.

My comments about BBO translation project :

IMHO it is a waste of time and I would prefer other priorities.
Basic English must be our 'lingua franca'.

As you easily guess, English is not my mother's tongue but basic English perfectly fulfils my communication needs, and I think that it should be so for all bridge players in the World.
I think it is more important and useful to learn basic English than bridge, and it ought to be a priority to everyone.
I want to say to all bridge players in the World : before learning bridge, please, learn basic English.

Incidently : how is it possible today that someone can't communicate in English ?
All over the World, basic English is an important part of minimum school program.

Erkson

[mishovnbg]

I agree with erkson, in bulgaria in any school basic english is common now - new world reallity. But I am volunteer to translate what Fred&Uday like. I will be happy to help with what I can to them and BBO.
Misho

[Jangvik]

Hi bridge fellows. I have no problem with having bbo in english only. However I do know a few friends of mine who have problem with the client due to their lack in english.
And although English now is a language that is taught in every school in the world I do think this is a good idea.

BBO is a wonderful world who should be accessible for everyone and it isn't today. In our country, many people over 40 years have huge problems with understanding english. So go on Fred and company!

A good start would be to update the helpfiles first, if it is possible to get them translated in "any" language many people could use the client thanks to the help files even if the client is in english.

[Erkson]

Jangvik, on May 14 2004, 07:24 AM, said:

A good start would be to update the helpfiles first, if it is possible to get them translated in "any" language many people could use the client thanks to the help files even if the client is in english.

I agree with that idea.

Translation of Help file doesn't waste Fred's time and can be done by gentle volunteers for every country.

Erkson

[csdenmark]

My vote will also be it is not worth the effort. I think the problem is not that big as people with no basic english skills simply choses specialized playing sites and there are several of those already.

My vote will be to change in a way that the commercial translation tools on WEB will be good regarding BBO information too. This means move general info from the client into WEB-sites. This also means in those sites write bridge as 'bridge' to avoid translation of the word as it will be wrong translated etc. In no way you will ever be able to handle the 52 different indian languages.

In this Forum and on help sites you simply ad the clickable icon for translation from this site http://babelfish.alt...om/babelfish/tr . Last month 3 new languages was added: Greece, dutch and an additional chinese. You may test it clicking this link: http://www.altavista...ee/mtwain_story

We have had much improvement in Vugraph schedule in the simple way that time is no longer stated as GMT which we no longer use. Time is now always stated as CET and EST. An improvement here is still possible by let the time be a clickable link to fixed time for world clock.

Thinking in this way will do the job I think.

[mrdct]

Having the vugraph schedule in EST & CET may be convenient for people who live in those timezones but is quite a hassle for people who live outside of those timezone and even more hassle for people in the southern hemisphere who have daylight savings at a different time of year.

Also, showing EST & CET together often causes date errors as for 25% of the time EST & CET are on different days.

An automatic means of the vugraph schedule being presented in the user's own timezone would be fantastic, but in the meantime GMT and GMT only would be much for convenient.

[mink]

I also vote that making the client display messages in several languages is not worth the effort. I have introduced several average players from my local bridgeclub to BBO. At least 2 of them had little or no knowledge of the English language and they both managed to play without much trouble.

Even if the client talks the native language of the user, most other players still do not. I think this is a much greater handicap for a non-English-speaking person. The client has only a limited set of messages, and they are soon understood. But people talk whatever they like, and it is a great disadvatage if you do not understand them.

Karl

[Free]

I don't see any problem in making the program multi-language, but honestly I won't use it... I rather like everything from bridge in English. However, I might help to translate to Dutch.

I think many people are only thinking about young people playing bridge here. Ok, these usually had English in school, know some English from music as well, but the oldies ( ) might not know any English at all. If I would ask my grandma, she wouldn't understand a word. I don't know what percentage old people represent online, but I think it's still worth an effort somehow. The biggest problem imo is selecting the languages you want, because there will always be someone who still can't use his own...

[csdenmark]

mrdct, on May 14 2004, 11:48 AM, said:

Having the vugraph schedule in EST & CET may be convenient for people who live in those timezones but is quite a hassle for people who live outside of those timezone and even more hassle for people in the southern hemisphere who have daylight savings at a different time of year.

Also, showing EST & CET together often causes date errors as for 25% of the time EST & CET are on different days.

An automatic means of the vugraph schedule being presented in the user's own timezone would be fantastic, but in the meantime GMT and GMT only would be much for convenient.

I only mentioned this as an example of the easyness to take advantage from standard tools free available to all on internet. What I mean here is fx. stating time as: Time is fixed on Wednesday, 26 May 2004 3:00:00 PM Paris time

Aut. translation John Goold will be able to put in for help files tomorrow and those important sites will be available in 10+ languages at once.

So simple is translation of BBO help sites:

Dutch language

German language

French language

Italian language

[Fluffy]

A friend of mine (sonrisa) knows nearly nothign about english, but she has downloaded some extern translation programs, she is translating every wrod she wants to know and to say (even to bulgarian/turk ) the problem she finds is time: she cannot cut text from the client and has to copy manually, if that could be somehow changed she would be so happy.

[Gerardo]

My guess is the "Announcements" section is set up as ONLY for Announcements, one-way only.

[uday]

I locked the 'special announcements' forum to allow announcements to be clearly separated from discussions.

[Erkson]

csdenmark, on May 14 2004, 10:49 AM, said:

So simple is translation of BBO help sites:

French language

-------------------Translation to French----------
La cendre you can see, la passerelle base aide Online's presented cendre hyperlinked le document that are viewed using your "browser" est.

_ dans most cas, the aider être presented cendre a topic that has additional information that être presented dans secondary "window panes". You click on a (move the mouse pointer au sujet de a highlighted phrase le or graphic and click the mouse le button) to view the additional or louche related information. Les browsers generally change the shape ou the mouse pointer when it est hovering au sujet de a and louche nous highlight the - so mouse around !!! louche
-----------------------

Sorry, Claus, but translation to French is totally unintelligible, and worst than I could ever imagine.
Translation to other languages seems better.

Erkson

[slothy]

As no one has seemed to have bothered will put link to Freds article here

Fred's (Unanswerable ) Post On Translation Project. Click Me

Hi all,

Well, Claus, the Italian one is just as incomprehensible as the French.

The Turkish one is about as readable as a Braille document coated in sugar.

Not that i wish in any way to denounce these on-line initiatives for natural language translators as they are better than nothing. But for the purposes Fred outlined in his document they are more of a hindrance than a help.

I for one will be very willing to help in any translation that may need doing.

Even though i am English, i think that we make a grave and dangerous assumption that everyone speaks English. Even more damning of my native language speakers is their supercilious and arrogant belief that everyone should speka ze English!!

Even though the lingua franca of the table-talk may have to be English by sheer virtue of probability there is no reason to handicap people - for not wanting or having the opportunity to speak English - by not enabling the application front-end in their own language or one that they would just be as likely to speak as English eg French, German, Turkish, Arabic, etc ,etc.

I would propose translations into those languages that make up a 'significant' sector of the user-base (we can abandon Aramaic and Cherokee on this basis )

Even though i dont necessarily agree (fully) with Maurice Druon 'Ministre des Affaires culturelles (1973-1974) who said that French was a "gift to civilisation" (Le Figaro) hee hee (only said this to annoy Dom and Henri ) i think translations into French, italian, Spanish and Turkish will be MUCH appreciated. Doing a quick head-count in the lobby these seem to make up a fair proportion of the user-base,

Alexandre L'Anglais

[Maaa]

LOL LOL LOL

Had a look at the German link you posted, Clas.... well it sounds worser then the instruction for my wok. At least a great fun to read it!!

Marta

[Maaa]

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather then German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty´s Government conceded that English spelling has some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan what will be known as Euroenglish ( Euro for short).

In the first year "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which hava always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful, and they wil go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v".

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikltis and evriun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru !

[uday]

Funny, M

70 % of our users have their keybds set to a language other than English. Of course none of us communicating in the English forums need BBO-in-another-language.

F has his work cut out for him on the client. My job will be somewhat easier - extracting my messages and creating the website to allow our friendly volunteers to xlate the msgs to other languages.

[csdenmark]

I know many have fun trying to degrade the value of aut. translations. They are not mine and I certainly have no stocks in any of those company's - pity.

I use them to read texts in foreign languages translated into english. From that I translate into danish. I have no really problem with that. So I also do the other way and the info is normally understood with no problems. So if you have hard problems - you simply have bad will!

The translation tools are for commercial use and they therefore have some good values. They have come to stay and will certainly be improved over time. You may have noticed Google now also have adopted this kind of activities.

From the beginning a lot of new sites to be translated into a lot of languages can be produced. Thats not the problem. The problems arise as soon you of some reason need to modify a page. Then it is no longer 1 page to be modified - but 10-20-30 in languages you cannot handle yourself.