Werner
Maybe I over-reacted, but I feel we should not discourage foreign
languages. Anyway, you live in a country where Spanish is the second
language and may become the first one within a decade or so :-)
Steve's translation into French was also as hilarious as the German one
and I do agree with you that these translation services are not
adequate. You only have to look at the English of instruction sheets of
many foreign products to see that.
I also agree that English is the technical lingua franca. If it were,
for example, Serbo-Croat or even Greek, I would be very hard put to
phrase a question in it, so I would be obliged to put it into either
English or French. Even my German is roughly similar to that spoken by a
Spanish cow. I sympathise with the original poster if his English is
inadequate to write even broken English. It is not his fault and he
should not be remonstrated against. I agree that the chances of his
receiving an answer may be slim, but that should not be a reason for
slanging him.
BTW, the technical terms in French are often very different from English
and it may be the same in other Latin languages although the French go
to ridiculous extremes to preserve the "purity" of their language (it is
illegal and punishable to say you have a CD-ROM for sale, it is a
cédérom!!!!)
Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!
Brian
Werner Engelmaier wrote:
>
> Hi All,
> I think a couple of points have been missed.
> First, Steve effort with the Internet-translators shown that these programs
> have trouble even with conversational language, if the translation into
> German, which was rather bad, is typical. This would make translations of
> technical messages essentially useless.
> Second, whether we like it or not, English is the lingua franca of technical
> communications; so in order to communicate, and even more if one wants
> questions answered, one should do it in english, even if it is broken English
> (I give workshops in German and essentially all newer technical terms used in
> Germany are the English terms with no German equivalents in many cases--this
> is also true in Japanese);
> Third, "I am shocked at the parochialism of those crying for English-only
> posts on an international forum. Are you implying that those without a good
> command of written English have no right to make a posting? It may be that
> anyone who can understand Spanish and can make a valid reply to Fernando wou
> ld be intimidated from doing so by this arrogance. Shame on you!" While it is
> true, that many Americans do not speak a foreign language and EXPECT to be
> able to communicate everywhere in English, this is an overreaction when
> somebody wanted to help but could not, see 2nd item (Sorry, Brian).
> Merry Christmas & Happy New Jear! (in German (sorry, that's my limit):
> Fröhliche Weihnachten & ein glückliches Neues Jahr!)
> Werner Engelmaier
>
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