To our foreign friends

I'd give you a GA, but apperently, you cannot award GAs to OPs.

I think it's a fine suggestion.

Plus GOP could get you into politics. Nah! S.M.

I would add a few more steps. After using the translation tool, read over how it was translated as sometimes the intent of the message may get distorted. Then correct what doesn't make sense. And of course the last thing before submitting your post is to spell check.

My wife is Japanese. She says the online translations are quite poor for Japanese language.

I find online translators are much better than they used to be, but that's not saying much. I still wouldn't recommend them if you really want to be understood. They are even less reliable when you start using technical terms.

I think anyone who understands enough english to be able to understand our responses will will have a good enough grasp of english to make a better job than any online translator.

Maybe it would work for English into American. Sorry Del the Cat I just had to say that.

Excellent experiment. GA.

I noticed you didn't have any Latin based languages in your group...so I did English->Spanish->English using http://translate.google.com and got this:

Spanish

It is often difficult to understand a message because of language barriers. My suggestion is to write the message in their native language and then use a translation program to convert it into English before posting. Translation only takes seconds. Some languages ​​are easily translated into other languages​​, others not. Not hurt to try.

From the original English

Many times it is hard to understand a post due to language barriers. My suggestion is to write out your message in your native language and then use a translation program to convert it into English before posting. The translation only takes a few seconds. Some languages translate easily into other languages; some don't. Doesn't hurt to try.

Perhaps it's best to start in Spanish and convert to English. ;-)

My language choice was mostly random and used different translator that responds better in my interests fields. Anyway translators are evolving. We're just not there yet. When I get a good syntax result without severe meaning change I'm generally happy. But on idioms and terminology I've more or less given up for now. S.M.

How the heck did Gaitonde get in there ? Some copy/paste glitch i guess.

Here is the Hindi version in Devanagari script :

कई बार यह मुश्किल है एक भाषा अवरोध के कारण पद को समझते हैं. मेरा सुझाव है करने के लिए अपने देशी भाषा में अपना संदेश लिखें और फिर एक अनुवाद प्रोग्राम का उपयोग करने के लिए पोस्टिंग से पहले अंग्रेजी में इसे बदल सकते हैं. अनुवाद केवल कुछ सेकंड लेता है. कुछ भाषाओं के अन्य भाषाओं में आसानी से अनुवाद, कुछ नहीं है. चोट करने की कोशिश न करे.

A reasonably ok translation.... except for the last one which translates colloquially to "Don't try to hurt" (Hindi is not my mother tongue, still, i am ok with it)

And this one back into English...

_{Many times it is difficult to understand the term due to a language barrier. I suggest to write your message in your native language and then to use a translation program can change it in English before posting. Translation only takes seconds. Some languages ​​easily translated into other languages​​, some do not. Does not hurt to try.}

Hmmm....not bad. It reversed the error made in the last line.

Good idea ronseto. i hadn't tried out this translator. It is quite good.

And GA to you, SM.

This is going to be a nightmare.

I wonder how may folk remember Gil when he first joined?

His English improved remarkably over the years.

I remember Gil well. I wonder what ever happened to him.

And he wasn't even a foreigner.

Having been a non German speaking administrator on a German site which had many English and Danish members, I tried various translation programs. To be honest I gave up with them. Fortunately the German and Danish moderators would translate stuff for me, in return they would send their posts to me first for checking before posting.

The first couple of post I tried in the German section using a translator brought howls of laughter

I agree that sometimes it is difficult but do you not have the feeling that sometimes the barrier is less the language than the way people think? I sincerely many times do not understand (and I am not the only one) what English or American speaking participants want to explain. Of course I am neither nor one of above.