No Thanks Foreign Language Versions of KHV

Okay, just a thought, but would it be possible to run the site in multiple languages? We wouldn't have to change much (as far as my inexperienced self knows), but I think it would be nice to run it in maybe Spanish as well as English. It's not a priority problem or anything, just an idea. I'm sure a bunch of the people here know Spanish/French/Japanese/Italian/Russian/etc. and I think it would be an interesting way to encourage more people to post if we offered the site in their language. Not that we could translate all threads or anything, but instead maybe offer a <foreign language> forum and it could be moderated by someone who is fluent.
-- not sure if this has been brought up, I looked and couldn't find it anywhere, so.

 

I sort of like the translation idea, but I don't know if diff. language forums where you could have one language only, because then you'd need someone to overlook it who knew that language, which might be harder to find than you'd think. Also, it would separate the members into where they are from which is a bad thing imo. But as far as translating the site (News, Rules; the information) I think that's a good idea. There are several people who could translate it, and they wouldn't have to be staff to do so.

I could be the Norwegian translator x3

 

I think they're both good ideas.

Translating the rules and everything would be good for obvious reasons.

And making forums dedicated to other languages not only would make people who know them talk more, but IMO, it would encourage, even if just slightly, people to learn languages they don't know but want to, maybe just out of curiosity to know what the hell is going on.
I myself "learned" English once i joined my first forum, just by looking treads that caught my interest.

 

It is a decent idea but would it work out?

 

Thumbs up.

 

It really depends on how many people on KHV that actually don't have English as their first language. From what I've seen so far, there are quite a number of them, so I think that it's very possible it would work out.

 

I'd offer to deal with the Finnish section, but I think there's only two or three semi-active Finns on the forum xDx
I speak very rusty French and Swedish, so I could be of little help in those sections too...

It's a good idea, but possibly a bit hard to get in order.

 

I would let myself say let me help with the Italian translation, but I wouldn't want to mess up too badly. Plus I wouldn't know how many native Italians there are on the board.

 

How would staff go about moderating something that isn't in their language?

 

Have someone they trust reporting everything/moderating that part? Google translate in worst case scenarios?

 

That's the thing I'm worried about, which is why I think it'd be better not to have one for diff. languages, but only translating important stuff.

 

Why not just translating the board and require that the posting language be English?

 

I think this would be a simpler yet still very useful option. Perhaps we could have small sections for questions asked and maybe some discussions in different languages. But the posting language in most of the forums should be English, simply to make the site easier to moderate. I do remember seeing a Kingdom Hearts site in French, although I don't remember the url, or if it even had the same concept as KHV.

 

Offering the board in another language would be fairly easy, but all it wouldn't translate the actual threads/posts. For example, in a thread my name would still appear as Misty, my usertitle would still be English, 'Alderaan' for my location, and my signature would still be in English. But other things--the 'Edit Post' button, the 'Reply' button, the 'Reply With Quote' button, etc, all of that would be in the other language. We'd just have to install another language to the site, which you can get from vB, iirc.

But having the posts & threads in a different language even though the user inputted them in English would be a lot harder. I'm not even sure if it is possible, since it would have to be something that the site does for you, and we all know how shaky online translators can be. I haven't looked into it at all (though I will due to this thread), so correct me if I'm wrong. =]

So basically, navigating the forum would be made a lot easier to those who use a different language, but they'd still need to know English to see the content on the site, the threads, and the posts. There's also the issue of what languages to install--we may have three or four members who use one language, but we can't exactly install it just for them.

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. To make navigation easier and, if possible, have someone translate the news, seeing as that will be of everyone's interest. Having people translate the news would make it accurate as far as grammar etc goes. As far as the translation of posts, if people don't understand it, they can use google translate or something equivalent to that on their own. I mean, google translate isn't THAT good, but it will give you the basic understanding of the text.

As far as what languages to put up, you could just choose the big ones, if not just wouldn't it be possible to create a poll asking what people's main language is? Where you have of course have the bigger ones, like spanish, french, italian, portugese, russian, etc. Also, you could supplement the poll with a thread where people write their first language.

 

Spanish translator here! Maybe Rat could help me too.

I support the idea of translating the Rules/News/Staff(?) sections. It could help members understand stuff more easily, and it wouldn't be too difficult to translate. We can put up some links to the foreign language Rules in the english rules(eg. Para las reglas en español click aqui(lol))