Perhaps you could implement a mechanism to automatically translate messages into english and back when needed...All the french post in french, the mailing list system recognizes it comes from a french site (*.fr) and runs it through a filter that translates it. Whenever a new message needs to be sent to the french, the mailing list system recognizes it goes to a french site (*.fr), and translates it back to french. This example should work for any language.
Basic rule:
If a message's source and destination speak different languages, have an intermediate filter translate them automatically. A useful criteria may be the FQDN's country domain.
This may be kinda tricky, but I trust that the system admins in charge of the mailing list are clever guys/gals, and this should be a piece of cake for them. I don't know how to reach them with this idea, so I'm posting here. Hopefully someone can forward this to them.
I realize that at this time, there are few foreign messages, which might not warrant the effort in "rewiring" the mailing list system. This could change later...so this idea may be a good one to save.
I think a provision for automatic translation could help us all out.
From: Andrew C Aitchison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Mailing list structure Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 22:56:58 +0000 (GMT)
On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Raymond Jennings wrote:
> I'm getting a few messages in foreign languages. Could the xfree86.org
> people fork into .fr, .uk, .ru, .it, and so on?
>
> I think we need to split the mailing list by language because not a whole
> lot of us speak french, italian, or whatever other crazy language you can
> think of.
>
> This may need to be relayed to the xfree86.org sysop, as it may involve the
> entire site.
I'm not at all sure that this is a good idea.
There are areas of XFree86 understood by only a few people. If we have lists for different languages, people will think they can get help in that language, but will anyone who understands their problem understand their language well enough to be subscribed to the list in that language ?
I don't read French well enough to subscribe to a French XFree86 list, but the reasons I haven't replied to the two latest posts. I've seen in French have nothing to do with them being in French (The first was off-topic for forum@, and I understand that "please don't send technical requests here, send them to ..." messages are handled offline by someone else. The second appeared to require no action, although I've just double-checked with babelfish, and maybe I should do something...)
Six months we "rationalized" the mailing lists, combining traffic for lots of lightly-used technical topics into one or two lists. Users are likely to be better at choosing the right language-based list than they were at picking the relevant technical topic-based list, but even so I don't think that the traffic (at least the non-spam traffic) justifies splitting the list by language; at least not yet.
Bottom line, I'm happy to continue seeing messages in languages I don't read, and may even use babelfish or similar to reply to the odd post that contains enough keywords to catch my attention.
Maybe if we publicize a decision to allow postings in any language the number of non-English posts will grow to the point where I'll change my mind.
-- Andrew C. Aitchison Cambridge [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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