As stated previously, the online translators are marginal at best and even
worse with regards to technical writing. My best suggestion is that if a
fellow engineering comrade from a foreign country posts a question on the
forum, kindly see if you or a fellow co-worker, who is multi-lingual, can
translate "to and fro" for us less adept in our lingual skills. Given this
size of the forum and the contacts we know, we should be able to address a
good portions of these international inquiries. For example, although I am
linguistically inept, offhand I know four individuals who can each translate
Japanese, Thai, German, and Spanish (yes, I understand that the Asian
languages will likely come up as jibberish but I am just making a case). I
am just one out of the approximately 1500 members of this forum. Although
these inquiries might be a bit more cumbersome than 100% english, we are all
here to help one another. Just my two cents (or two pence, or ne yen, or
dos pesos, or...) Happy Holidays!
Best Regards,
Mark Gilbert, Product/Process Engineer
FOX Electronics
For Frequency Control Solutions. . . Fast:
1-888-GET2FOX, ext. 289
Fax: 941-693-1554
http://www.foxonline.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Ellis [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2000 3:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] Re: [TN] PRESIÓN DE VACÍO
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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