Author Topic: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog  (Read 65144 times)

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Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« on: March 24, 2007, 12:47:53 AM »

Offline Bob Day

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We are interested in knowing how many members here would be interested in some CelticsBlog discussion forums in languages other than English. We know we have a number of members and visitors who enjoy another tongue as their primary language. We know too that many of our international members and visitors are quite fluent in English, but also that some struggle with our language a bit and yearn for discussions here in their own, first languages.

We also know that many of our visitors speak little or no English at all. We see this in how often our auto-translators are used (that's what the little flags at the very top left of every page here are for--in case some of you didn't know). Having automatic, site wide language translation available here for several languages is a nice feature. Those translations are "read only" though and somewhat awkward at times in how they render our often grammar-free, slangy English into other languages.

Given those realities, we would like some feedback on this inquiry from some of our existing, other language/international members. Understand that, although we don't need large numbers of people initially interested in order to justify creating a "foreign" language forum here at CB, we will need at least one, if not two or more bilingual (Other and English), trustworthy forum moderators of our choosing who would be willing to help us manage each language forum we create here. Naturally, it may take some time for us to determine how best we may go about this or even if it is something doable. It won't hurt for us to consider it though and the best way to do that is to begin talking about it.

I guess the most common question our strictly English-speaking CelticsBlog members have might have about the prospect of other language forums here would be, "Why?" Well, there are a number of reasons and we'll talk about those more when we can make the time. For now we though, we want to limit discussion in this topic to hearing from as many of you who are interested, in how one or more other language forums might benefit some of our non-English members and visitors as well as the English-speaking CelticsBlog community in general.

This will be an open, ongoing discussion with no time limit. We invite your thoughts on this.
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Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2007, 02:32:20 AM »

Offline Dirk

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I would definitely be intrested in the creation of forums in languages other than English. My own recommendation would be a forum in Spanish. From what I read in the "Celticsblog International???" thread, Spaniards ranked 4th in traffic last month after Canada, Australia (both English speaking) and the Europen Union. Then, 15 of the other countries listed (including Chile which is from where I come from, but somehow wasn't listed :(...) are spanish-talking nations.

I believe this would be a great step forward for the site. I am more then intrested in discussing stuff with other spanish-talking people and know what they think, wether it's the Celtics, basketball in general, or anything else, and get to know them a little thanks to this great place.

Good move guys. I was hoping this would happen someday. It brings an added value to the blog, and international posters contribute for a wider perspective of things being discussed, no doubt of that.
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Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2007, 03:47:08 AM »

Offline Mother

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I would speak spanish with other bloggers.

Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2007, 08:27:50 AM »

Offline Zoots

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I would speak spanish with other bloggers.
Might be some fun.  I could mangle some Spanish  ;D .  I could give it a go in Italian too.

Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2007, 12:10:32 PM »

Offline Edgar

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Count me in for the Spanish Forum
Count me in for helping u all in anything u want
Yo Hablo espanol  ;)
And very very fluently  ;)
Gracias
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Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2007, 12:25:38 PM »

Offline Bob Day

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Count me in for the Spanish Forum
Count me in for helping u all in anything u want
Yo Hablo espanol  ;)
And very very fluently  ;)
Gracias
Good to see you here Edgar. I would love for you to be a part of a Spanish forum at CelticsBlog. I'm hoping Requilla and marseye (French Guadalupe) can make their way over here soon also.
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Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #6 on: March 24, 2007, 02:38:56 PM »

Offline anilucas79

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Love this initiative. it would bring international people to chat with us which would, obviously, increase our knowledge in regards to international prospects.

Im a Portuguese speaking guy who habla un poquito tambien y soy de Mozambique.

PS: Have you ever heard about shrimp mozambique?lol

Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2007, 02:41:00 PM »

Offline Edgar

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Count me in for the Spanish Forum
Count me in for helping u all in anything u want
Yo Hablo espanol  ;)
And very very fluently  ;)
Gracias
Good to see you here Edgar. I would love for you to be a part of a Spanish forum at CelticsBlog. I'm hoping Requilla and marseye (French Guadalupe) can make their way over here soon also.

Well ...count me in... ;D
Once a CrotorNat always a CROTORNAT  2 times CB draft Champion 2009-2012

Nice to be back!

Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #8 on: March 24, 2007, 03:06:11 PM »

Offline Bob Day

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Love this initiative. it would bring international people to chat with us which would, obviously, increase our knowledge in regards to international prospects.
Yes, I think we could learn much about the players, coaches, teams and leagues, as well as how the game is managed and played internationally. By the same token, it might provide similar opportunities to our international friends with regard the Celtics, NBA and NCAA basketball. All in all, it seems something we might all get a lot from.

Of course, it would just plain be a whole lot of fun too! :D

Im a Portuguese speaking guy who habla un poquito tambien y soy de Mozambique.
Receba a nossa comunidade de CelticsBlog! (or something like that :))

PS: Have you ever heard about shrimp mozambique?lol
I sure have. There's a nice recipe for it at http://www.portuguesecooking.com :P
Yo no soy para el delicado!

Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #9 on: March 24, 2007, 03:15:10 PM »

Offline ChampKind

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I'd like a French forum, although I think participation would be limited, and Spanish would be way more popular.  Of course, if we're going to get obscure, let's get a Croatian forum too...I know there's at least one other person on this blog that would agree on that one...
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Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #10 on: March 24, 2007, 03:28:42 PM »

Offline Bob Day

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I'd like a French forum, although I think participation would be limited, and Spanish would be way more popular.  Of course, if we're going to get obscure, let's get a Croatian forum too...I know there's at least one other person on this blog that would agree on that one...
marseye would probably enjoy a French forum as would some of our friends at Celtics France as well. Some of the forums might take a little time to come together but, I think we are on the right track.
Yo no soy para el delicado!

Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #11 on: March 24, 2007, 05:31:33 PM »

Offline Bob Day

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One important subject related to the discussion of us setting up other language forums here at CelticsBlog is character encoding. This is fairly complex territory and I won't get into much other than to mention that CelticsBlog is setup to use ISO8859 character coding versus Unicode. What that means is that CelticsBlog can render most western or "latin" languages quite well, but is currently unable to correctly render the many written languages around the world that require very special characters sets or RTL (right to left) rendering, etc.

All of the languages we've mentioned so far (with the possible exception of Croatian--which may be Cyrillic) as well as many others can be handled well by CB at this time. Many though, such as Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindu, etc. cannot. In order for us to do those languages as well as other, non-latin ones, we'll need to convert all major software here to Unicode. In particulary, we would need to convert it to UTF-8.

Currently the main issue is to the fact that the Joomla main site is completely based on ISO8859 encoding whereas the SMF forums, although based on ISO8859, can be converted to UTF-8. The problem lies in that, if I convert SMF to UTF-8, it will break the strong integration we currently have between Joomla and SMF. The problem is not completely insurmountable though. CelticsBlog v.4.0 is already in the works and it will be entirely based on Unicode. It is my hope that we will be able to move into CB v.4 before Draft Day this year. We'll see.

BTW, never fear. We won't be stressing everyone out in the next site version with any change as dramatic as our last major CB upgrade. The most powerful changes in the next CelticsBlog will be "under the hood" so to speak. They will make the site faster, more secure and even way more powerful than I'll even mention here, but the user experience itself will change little other than it possibly becoming more enjoyable.

So, I wanted to tell you all a little bit about this current limitation on language forums we have and mention that we will be resolving it sitewide in the future. Meanwhile, I'll see if it is possible for me to convert the forums to UTF-8 without breaking our site integration.
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Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #12 on: March 24, 2007, 08:20:33 PM »

Offline Jeff

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you know the irony of this forum is the fact that I suffer from a bad case of monolingualism

my mom speaks 4 languages but none of that rubbed off on me

she used to yell at me for being able to memorize sports stats but not being able to remember spanish vocabulary words - my response was that I didn't really have to TALK to Fernando Venezuela, so what do I care?

I know, I'm terrible, I can't help it, I'm a big dumb Americano
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Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #13 on: March 24, 2007, 09:18:55 PM »

Offline Bob Day

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you know the irony of this forum is the fact that I suffer from a bad case of monolingualism

my mom speaks 4 languages but none of that rubbed off on me

she used to yell at me for being able to memorize sports stats but not being able to remember spanish vocabulary words - my response was that I didn't really have to TALK to Fernando Venezuela, so what do I care?

I know, I'm terrible, I can't help it, I'm a big dumb Americano
NingĂºn amigo de problema. Pienso que tendremos a muchos traductores para usted.

Español para {No problem friend. I think we will have many translators for you.}
Yo no soy para el delicado!

Re: Other Language Forums at CelticsBlog
« Reply #14 on: March 24, 2007, 10:01:18 PM »

Offline Fleetwood

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Another one for a spanish one, serĂ­a interesante y entretenido.

It's quite courious how many ppl have posted here asking for spanish forum, thought there would be more french or italian! As for the germans, it's a shame they dont like basket that much!