Fantastic member, but one caveat...

So on my Linnie Forum, one of our recent registrants is a highly valuable member to the community. He is extremely knowledgeable in our niche and is well-known where he comes from. He contributes a lot of information to our forum and has the potential to become one of the greatest assets our community has had.

There is one major problem though: He doesn't speak English, and when he tries, it's hardly understandable.

Your first question is probably how do I know that his contributions are so great if he isn't even writing in English?. The answer is: Google Translate

95% of this member's posts are in Dutch (or something like it) while the other 5% are in garbled English. He posted a huge (and very in-depth as well as interesting) article, but it is in Dutch. I'm trying to gather a small team to dissect it and translate it using the power of online translators :lol:.

Anyways, my main question is: what would you do? I have put this member on moderation so that my staff team and I have to manually approve each post he makes before it is posted. I do this to keep his Dutch posts off the public forum, because my forum is an English-language-only forum.

I don't want to tell him he's not welcome, but I can't just tell him to learn English overnight either. Where's the middle ground?

 

Seached it on your forum. Looks like his browser translates everything to Dutch, including quotes.

IMO I would request to keep it strictly English, since your forum is targeted on English language and English is still the most spoken language

 

Wow! That is a problem... Hmmm...

If there is a way to get in direct contact with him I would work with him directly on this problem and come to a middle ground. I'm sure he's more than willing to do a moderated post that is translate for the group. But it shows you care by making the first move and trying to work with him directly...

On ther other hand I;m sure that the staff will have to primed up for this task too. They will have to stay after the post and get them converted in a timely fashion too.

Unless... This member is willing to convert his post for you before he submits it. In other words makes his post in like lets say MS Word and then send it to conversion site and them copy and paste to your site...

Once again you'll have to make the first move and talk to him.

 

I'm curious to hear that your member from Holland (I'm assuming) has such poor English skills. All sarcasm aside almost everybody from Holland I've met has fair-excellent English skills, many better than native speakers, including myself.

I think you're going about it the right way moderate his posts then try to get them translated. If he has such good posts. The content is what will be valuable and worth the effort.

 

You can't really ask him to speak English just purely because of the fact that like you said, he cant speak it very well, i guess the only thing you can do is moderate his posts, trasnlate them and post them in English.

Is there not a add on? That can translate his posts for you?

Or i guess if its going to be too much trouble, you'll have to ask him to leave...

 

I would PM him and explain the situation and that your forum is English only. I know if I were on a forum and my posts were kicked into the moderation bin after posting lots of information I wouldn't be too happy. Then again we're all lucky that English is our first language and therefore we don't have any problems communicating online.

My solution would be to ask him to run his posts through a translator before posting. If that presents a problem for him, I'd allow the posts to stand in Dutch but include a translation link globally in the postbit this way he doesn't feel singled out.

Either way I'd remove kick to moderation bin it just doesn't sit well with me in any case especially where a member is very help helpful but cannot really help the language issue.

 

Have him post in his native language in the lower 1/2 of his post, and what google translates in the upper 1/2?

Of course he would need to know about google translate.

If the information is that good, then people can re-translate as needed to interpret the intent of the post. Of course ideally someone that knows both languages can help out.

 

Google Chrome 5.0.342.9 beta (note it is BETA ) will automatically translate to a set language. I use it all the time to read certain Greek newspapers in "machine translated" English

Not sure how that fact can be used to help in this instance....maybe advising as part of his signature like "best viewed as 1280 x 1024"

Yes it goes against the English language policy but surely that policy will become dated and if it has got to go sometime maybe now is the time especially since the contributor has such valuable knowledge.

Experiment with Chrome (beta) anyway, it is not to everyone's taste but it is the way translation ideas are going. Not sure how or if it is going to translate a page with mixed language posts but if you don't experiment you'll never find out.

 

We alreay have this issue on vb.org - we have an English only rule and anyone who posts in another language is asked to post in English. If they dont comply then their posts are removed. If you have such a rule then you should stick to it.

 

The English language only rule was needed so that people could not post things in a foreign language that would be moderated out if the same was said in English.

Now with automatic translation software starting to be available for free such a rule is becoming unnecessary. I'm not saying now is the time to change it but that is the way things are going and sooner or later you are going to have to move on just as most people have moved on from Windows 98

If Google Chrome (Beta) is doing it currently you can be sure other browsers will follow. Yes it will bring problems but it will also bring a whole new load of potential members with valuable knowledge.

If you are going to lose the "English language only" aspect sometime maybe now is the time to start trying a few things to accommodate other languages in which case your problem is gone. Maybe announce it as a 2 month trial to test the water, if it doesn't work you are no worse off than you are now and you can trial it again in a year's time.