Multilingual forum - best practices

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Sophocles
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Multilingual forum - best practices

Post by Sophocles »

Hi there,

I am looking for some experiences others have with the multilingual use of phpBB:

We are about tpolaunch a forum where people from various countries can participate. Most speak English, but many would prefer to contribute in Spanish or Italian.

An example for a category: Visiting tips for Rome or My favourite Wine with Pizza.

Now Italians would probably be able to give great tips from the "local" perspective, while Brits may have discovered things an Italian never thought of and vice versa.

So should we make 2 categories? "Visiting tips for Rome" and "Consigli di visita per Roma"?

What are your experiences in real life?

Looking forward to your thoughts

Thanks
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warmweer
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Re: Multilingual forum - best practices

Post by warmweer »

The easiest way to do that is to let your members post in a language which you have approved (and installed) for use with HifiKabin's Google translator extension (actually Google Translator does a pretty good job of translating).

That way your members can choose in which language they want to read the board.

PS: read the Extension support to get the latest version
Sophocles
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Re: Multilingual forum - best practices

Post by Sophocles »

Thanks for your suggestion, however Google translate has two problems for us: 1. data protection, which does not exist in their universe, 2. their translations are not good.

I'll ask around in some of the community forums and see how they manage it.

Cheers
Holger
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Re: Multilingual forum - best practices

Post by Holger »

Automatic translation will never be really good.
It is more about getting a (good) hint what the foreign text is about.

I understand that you dont like Google Translate

But we have applied the Flags Ext and a Google Translate Ext. So Google Translate uses the correct settings/language-pair from start. Every post from a user with a choosen Flag has a little link at the bottom saying "Translate this post".
The link is only shown to users having choosen a Flag themselves.

Clicking the link translates the post on the fly, Ajaxed, without page-reload.

That works ok-ish.
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thecoalman
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Re: Multilingual forum - best practices

Post by thecoalman »

I don't have any experience with this but I think the obvious solution is to categorize the languages.

Quick tip, you can apply different styles to different forums. So you could for example have an Italian style for your Italian category etc.
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nou nou
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Re: Multilingual forum - best practices

Post by nou nou »

warmweer wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 9:22 am The easiest way to do that is to let your members post in a language which you have approved (and installed) for use with HifiKabin's Google translator extension (actually Google Translator does a pretty good job of translating).

That way your members can choose in which language they want to read the board.

PS: read the Extension support to get the latest version
I wouldn't go that route: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... 01#p780701

Shame, I wouldn't mind a forum that's truly multilingual, but imagine setting something like that up and years later the service stops...

Probably what thecoalman is suggesting would be the best way forward - different forums for different languages.
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lurttinen
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Re: Multilingual forum - best practices

Post by lurttinen »

Automatic translations at best, are shit.

I'd rather learn to read and write another language, than have to read automatic translation made from it.

Googles, facebooks, and sorts have billions to spend and still suck at inflections to different languages.
This leaves the rest of the (non english) world with crappy worded frontend that just sort of tries to describe something with bad grammar.
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