If the website owner writes in their community guidelines to âplease use Englishâ, I wouldnât interpret that as a plea, but rather as a polite form to mandate it. Maybe itâs us German speakers who are used to a more direct way to say it and therefore interpret it that wayâŚ
But anyway, we had the discussion in several threads before and the admins always confirmed it, let me look it up.
I am sure they know that their text is not in English, for they wrote it in German.
I suppose they think âI needed to use a translator website to translate everything into German, for I do not understand English, and now it is just fair that others need to translate my text!â
I think that profile in other that English language is not that big of a problem. The big problem is this: if user donât speak English how should I communicate with them. You canât that easily translate handwriting on the card
I somewhat understand people who feel uncomfortable writing in English and have done their profiles in their native language instead. I too used to be literally scared everytime I had to use English. However, the rules are rules and this is a global community so English should be the preferred language. Probably doesnât matter much if the member joined mostly for postcard / stamp collecting, but the main idea behind Postcrossing was the communication, and that is going to be little difficult to do if everybody uses their own language.
I had 6 years + few courses at school/uni, but language skill is the type of skill that, once a certain point of knowledge has been reached, will continue to get better almost by its own⌠so long it is used! Been about 20 years since that first English lesson.
My browser tried but it also wanted to translate the languages I know and the quality was horrifying so I switched that one off.
Back to the original question:
This is a difficult to answer as people generally reacts differently when offered help on something they might think they are doing fine or is okay. Some might be genuinely happy to have help, some might feel irritated and wonder âwhy you even ask? My profile is working fineâŚâ and then there might be some people who had totally missed the fact the profile should be in English. In my opinion, you may always offer the help but try to do it in a way as polite as possible, and be prepared to be ignored or questioned.
I have offered help few times, and so far the most common answer has been âno thanksâ followed by slightly confused reply about why I even offered. So if I saw a profile without English, I would ask the Postcrossing team to take a look and talk with the member. They have more experience, the official contact usually works better than a random member reaching out, and it is what they do.
I have actually so far never got profile without English. Some has several languages tho, which I think is great way to make sure everybody understands, but also have the comfort to use the native language.
Google translstor is helpful to get an idea of a text in a foreign language, but not more.
Try to translate a text from Japanese to English, then from English to German, from German to Russian, from Russian to Mandarin and then from Mandarin back to Japanese and see the result.
Not all languages are in Google translate, so then you canât use it.
Some languages translate poorly.
There fore, itâs good to learn some basic English, if you join a âuse Englishâ site. (And not allow everyone to use their native languages, because if someone tries to translate it, the language might not be there at all).
If Google translate were so good, why doesnât the profile owner use it. Why is it in the hands of all the other members to use it, and not them?
I like straightforward too, so the twists, which, sorry, I donât even understand or see, are misunderstanding resulting from me using a strange language. (And maybe you too?)
Deepl is a great translater. I use this one if I need something translated.
But I agree with you. This site is used by poeple of many different countries. The polite thing to do is to keep your profile in a language that everyone can understand to not discriminate. So if one does not feel comfortabel to use English oder doesnât know how, than at least they could try to translate it with help of any of the translater there are.
@S_Tuulia
100 percent of accurate is not needed officially. just to get some ideas from the google translate site is good enough. we all just encounter only once officially anyway, you know ?
same goes to the context of our own profiles. no one is perfect.
The postcrosser i was sent to send a postcard too has profile written in German language instead of English.
I have no idea what its says so do i just send any postcard?