Multilingual Reviews

I am against multilingual PA. I say that, although my native language is German, and I have not contributed to reviews, yet, because it takes me so much time to write it in a foreign language. So I understand your point. Still I am against it. Why? I see this site as a means to exchange thoughts and to communicate with each other. If several languages were allowed, I see the danger of "segregation": the Spanish group, the German group etc., where the people communicate inside the groups but do not know what is going on in the other. (I mean both in reviews and in the forum.) This would be a pity.

So I use this site further to improve my English.

Trouserpress wrote: I don't understand the need for language restrictions on reviews these days. Why must we force our foreign visitors to cobble together a review in a second or third language or, worse still, feed the thing through an online translation tool? There's nothing worse than trying to read a review written by someone who clearly doesn't have the means to properly express themselves in English - they might as well have not bothered. Whereas, if that reviewer were allowed the freedom to write in their native language the site would be rendered more inclusive and the pages wouldn't be quite so riddled with poorly written reviews. Everybody wins!

Formentera Lady wrote: I am against multilingual PA. I say that, although my native language is German, and I have not contributed to reviews, yet, because it takes me so much time to write it in a foreign language. So I understand your point. Still I am against it. Why? I see this site as a means to exchange thoughts and to communicate with each other. If several languages were allowed, I see the danger of "segregation": the Spanish group, the German group etc., where the people communicate inside the groups but do not know what is going on in the other. (I mean both in reviews and in the forum.) This would be a pity. So I use this site further to improve my English.

Edited by Rivertree - January 21 2011 at 16:00

Segregation? the only segregation here is the people who can make reviews in his lenguage and people who dont , also in the first post i didnt propose a site/forum multilingual , i just want to make reviews multilingual , its terrible that not everybody can put his thoughts on the great prog database of here

I am one among more than 450 000 000 native Slavic speakers worldwide, but I would not like to see multilingual reviews here; it's an English-speaking site and I prefer it to stay that way.

The only other language I wouldn't mind to see on ProgArchives is French (even if I don't speak it); it's an official and native language of ProgArchive's founders.



Before 2005, my knowledge of English was on 'Me Tarzan, you Jane' level. I moved abroad and started improving my spoken English, but I started improving my writing skills only after summer of 2006, when I discovered this website and started writing reviews. Today I'm (hopefully) able to express deeper,abstract concepts in written form - and it's entirely ProgArchives' merit. (and I mean it; even if I used other English sources, from books to other web pages, it's ProgArchives who started the avalanche.)





What I want to say is: whether you like it or not, the English is today's lingua franca. If you don't use it properly, it's certainly useful to learn/improve it. No other language can be substituted in it's worldwide role. The non-English prog communities (both musicians and fans) are growing worldwide, and that's great, but Anglo-Saxon superpowers (UK, USA) are still epicentres of prog community and they will most likely remain so in forthcoming years.