The topic in general was on my inner blogging agenda long time ago. But now two things came interestingly together in one moment. During writing this following sentence (the context will be posted later):
… so feel free …
to participate in the language you want to choose – with the idea you want to share. But try also find a way as many as possible people can see / hear / follow your part.
My eye has been caught by an incoming mail, where the emerge community kindly pleases me to revise my aggregated feeds, because they are mainly in german language
(Important update: Not because of the language, because of the oversyndication. (it was maybe a bad idea to embed unasked all feeds (project blog, podcast, this blog)). But it raised up the topic so I left it here. Anyhow complained or not the problem is the same: You are confronted with informations which may be interesting for you – but you don’t know, because it is in foreign language. To leave no doubt – the work and outcome inside this community is sure one of the bet thing I’ve ever seen in the web. And I feel honored having been asked to participate anyhow. And to make shure again there isn’t any negative thought left. But in fact it is funny, when the elgg system behind welcomes you in your language, navigates with you in your language – so you are no aware of the problem behind. Or if you are aware you are entrapped to use it otherwise. Sorry from my side having somebody bothered there.
It is the more general question how to deal with language in future – pointing to the great possibilities and evolutions of the web, you may call it web2.X.
How do you deal the language problem? Are you aware of this as a problem for you?
Two little things are rising in my inner eye:
- The first: When i started the blog i never imagined so many peoples would read this. Thanx a small conversation with David Truss i know there are more peoples like me using dictionary or google translator for reading blogs in foreign languages. For sure I think i will never be able to follow japanese or kyrillic blogs.
- The second: Writing in foreign language takes so much more time. Maybe it is good for quality – but many deep-thought posts are dense in content therefore seems impossible.
So – how do you handle with languages and blogs? Is blogging in english the only advance you would give to your students? Maybe because of self-marketing issues? How do you argue? And for the non native english speaking readers: How do you handle the problem, when you offer your students something in english. Are they complaining? Do they oppose? In the wish seeing anyhow a discussion …
Best regards und „bis denne“ (German artificial slap for „see you later“)
Andreas
OK, not sure if this will make sense but here are some of my thoughts on this topic (not in any specific order):
The language problem can be dealt with by learning some of the most common languages on the web. Translation tools are also becoming more and more sophisticated. They will probably never replace human translators but can be of great help for someone who knows the topic of a text to figure out what the author is saying. I’ve recently read that Google is working on a translator project but can’t find the link right now.
Today, in Second Life, I used a translator that translates between 22 languages. I was able to chat with someone from China. The conversation made sense so it seems to work fine.
Actually, the language „problem“ is not new, we are only more aware of it now because the Internet has made it much easier to connect individuals to the world and the world to individuals. If you go to a newspaper agents or Zeitungskiosk in a Germany city, you will find newspapers in many languages. You normally buy the one written in your first language except if you want to practise another language or in a rare case that the information (news) you are looking for is only available in that foreign language.
Which language you use on your blog or on social networking sites is not an easy question. I think groups often have one common language. A local group will have their language and an international group most probably English.
I have chosen English for my blogs to reach a wider audience and because I teach English.
One problem I have is with my business blog/website. I want visitors to be able to choose between three languages but this is not an easy task (I use WordPress as CMS). I could also blog in three languages and use categories but I think this is not good for search machines and might also be confusing and not obvious for visitors with little Internet experience.
These are my thoughts. It will be interesting to see what happens to languages on the Internet. Some years ago, many people thought that English would be the only language that will survive on the Internet, this did not turn out to be true.
Nergiz
Thanx for your comment. Just pointing what i took: First there are tech tools trying to solve the problem and there should be an interesting view to the further developements. Secondly if you try to design a blog, you can have a audience in mind and having this you choose to serve your peers with the language you will reach most peoples. This could be added with a statement that if somebody start blogging he starts a progress and so he maybe doesn’t know which direction the blogging activities are going and it could be worth going to choose a modular and extendable strategy – in designing the own blogging challenge.
But i want also get in touch with the other side of the chain – pointing to the moment when you re writing. Maybe this is only my opinion, because it is based on observation and deep thoughts. But what changes when you are blogging in foreign language. Are there any changes in what you want to express or are able to express? Can you reach the same level of depth in you thoughts or expression? Or is this only a question of practice and training? Is it really? Sometimes writing posts in my mother-tongue allows me to use a much more variety in style, form, narration. So related to this thought – how to deal this with my students if I would reccoment writing in a foreign language of their choice. So what’s the change if you switch or have to. What will you loose, what will you win?
And the third thing – to be hinest i learned by observation from Cristina – what can change my view of the world learning to enjoy the existence of many languages? And what of this can be brought into topics named by such big words than literacy.
My 2 cents so it would be nice to see more such as interesting as enriching statements like from Nergiz.