Multi-lingual forum

[JZA]

I really think this forum should contain different languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Japanese.
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Alexandro Colorado
PPMC Apache OpenOffice
http://es.openoffice.org

[9point9]

So do I. It seems that there are a lot of people on these forums whose native language is not English and they can't get the answers they need. There are often posters that post things that only matter to those in their own locale.

There also seems to be a small minority who don't seem to understand that this is an international forum and post as if everyone else is in the same country, uses the same language, the same set of measures, the same laws, the same paper size etc.

Something I would suggest is that users complete their location field. This would give some idea of what langauge youy are using (not always) and it may be that another forum user can reply in their native language if the users English isn't that strong. It also gives other users some idea of what local laws may exist.

For the location field it's only really your country that is useful. There are a lot of people who use a lower level of address which unless the country is included, may not make clear where you are from. This mainly seems to affect US users, not everyone knows the 2 letter state abreviations (to me CA means Canada) and some may be confused so as to where you live. Just put USA.
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Arch Linux
OOo 3.2.0

OOoSVN, change control for OOo documents:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooosvn/

[JZA]

Maybe my point is that we should have an area on the forum for the exclusive language, example is the Linspire forums, the Macromedia Forums etc.

This could be promote from the OOo NLC groups and enrich the diversity of OOoForum. Another thing is the module so the users can choose on their options to have the forum on non-English and I think this is an extension for different phpBB2 forums.
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Alexandro Colorado
PPMC Apache OpenOffice
http://es.openoffice.org

[cwchia]

I do not think it is a big problem for users who are not proficient in English. Thay are most welcome to ask questions in their native language as the forum draws users from every continent in this world.

I think that new users should be told to post thier problem in their native language and users who are bi-lingual in that language and English can then translate it into English if there is no answer after awhile. In that case, users who cannot understand that particular language can then post thier input to help solve problems together.

If specific language forum is created, then some probelm may slip users who are unable to read those languages.

Therefore I suggest that new forums for specific languages be opened by the Moderators should just put a welcome message in it and direct the users to post in the relevant forum. The language specific forum should be lock up except for the Moderators.

[JZA]

Yes that sound like getting the best of both worlds. So who can do this?
_________________
Alexandro Colorado
PPMC Apache OpenOffice
http://es.openoffice.org

[cwchia]

The moderators:

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/groupcp.phtml?g=131&sid=0f9b35e5e97ab91ba055fdda629dd985