| General > General Technical Chat |
| [rant]why do english/chinese companies don't give a damn about other languages.. |
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| Cerebus:
--- Quote from: schmitt trigger on March 17, 2020, 04:31:45 pm ---Got to remember that for *many* of us in this forum, English is not our mother tongue. Dealing with idioms or slang or playing around with the grammar......makes us scratch our head trying to determine the tone. Is the person joking, angry, or being sarcastic? --- End quote --- That's the reason we have "Is the person joking :), angry >:(, or being sarcastic?". Note, there's no standard emoji for sarcasm, that's probably because sarcasm is pretty innately obvious (if it isn't you're doing it wrong). Text emojis developed during the days of Usenet precisely to deal with the issue of non-native English speakers in what was essentially an English only environment, and also to compensate for the typically terrible language skills of the (typically) engineering types that used Usenet. They are a hint as to how the writer intended what they have written to be interpreted. That's why sprinkling smileys around as random punctuation is a bad idea, it gives people the impression that they are meaningless when they are not. |
| andy3055:
South Africa has 11 but India has 22. So it must be even worse there. But the bottom line is just that... the Bottom Line! Businesses cannot afford to cater to all the languages for a decent cost. And then someone has to ship manual in the correct language depending on where the buyer is. It will be a logistical nightmare! Having said that, I have seen small leaflets (say like 3-5 pages) accompanying simple devices printed in a few languages like English, German, French etc. When it comes to technical stuff, it is a given that the users will need to have a working knowledge of English. |
| Cerebus:
"Africa" and the huge number of African languages is why Caterpillar (of yellow earth diggers and big trucks fame) developed "Caterpillar English", a simple, restricted vocabulary version of English that could be used for documentation where the local language represented too small a chunk of the market to make it economic to make local translations. They worked on the premise that the penetration of English was sufficient that a simplified version was likely to be acceptable where a translation wasn't feasible. (Often Africans that don't share a common tongue speak a 'pigeon' variety of English to each other even though no native English speakers are involved. Substitute 'Pigeon French' for some parts of Africa.) |
| schmitt trigger:
Cerebus; My post was actually directed to Glenn and his unintelligible post: They for real does cair!!! Just pleese puttings the happy screws in the exciting panel, and you will be very soon jumpings to the happy tunes!!! :phew: What is he saying? On the other hand, his other post was extremely insulting to you. No doubt about it. |
| Cerebus:
--- Quote from: blueskull on March 18, 2020, 03:26:16 am --- --- Quote from: schmitt trigger on March 18, 2020, 02:19:33 am ---Cerebus; My post was actually directed to Glenn and his unintelligible post: --- End quote --- I don't think Cerebus were defending Glen. He just doesn't want to be the next target of Glen. --- End quote --- No, I got muddled and though that I was being gently chided about being careless with letting Glenn know I was joking, and thought that schmitt had mistaken Glenn for a non-native speaker. (<sarcasm on> Why that might be I have no idea. <sarcasm off>). So the mistake is all mine. Next target? Seems I'm his current target. I've found Glenn to be wildly unpredictable. When he first showed up around here several people asked him, quite politely, to try and rein in his rather exuberant style in favour of comprehensibility. He didn't react well and went off, on several occasions at several people, on one of his nasty sociopathic little rants that we have an example of above. I had hoped that he'd calmed down and could be treated like a normal person and friendlily joshed with. Obviously not. If he's determined to be a volatile little man with a nasty little chip on his shoulder, so be it, no loss to me. |
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