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 > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d > To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in > the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet > To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL > Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives > Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional > information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------