International sections? Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 09:48:53 am
content: Hello.Are there plans to add international forum sections? I'm interested for the following reasons:- EEVblog's subtitles in English and Spanish: It can help me to improve my English skills.- Information about where to buy components and equipment, buy and sell to others, organize group buy.- Organize meetings, *spaces and workshops.Regards.

author: ElektroQuark
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 10:15:39 am
content: I asked about subtitles, but Dave dismissed the idea.I vote for the Spanish forum, it will have two users at least

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 10:18:10 am
content: Not a bad idea as this is a truly international forum.But how could you moderate it?As skilled as Moderators maybe, between them all I'd say it would be a tough ask.Mandarin anyone?EditUnless able to be moderatedEmphasis added also

author: PA0PBZ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 10:24:14 am
content: Quote from: tautech on April 02, 2015, 10:18:10 amI think it is a bad idea just because of that. Let's keep it an international forum and not break up the userbase by language.

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 10:29:46 am
content: I'm fluent in gibberish, looks like other's are as well.Anonymous Poster

author: ElektroQuark
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 10:35:42 am
content: Quote from: PA0PBZ on April 02, 2015, 10:24:14 amI think the idea is to add new users, those that not speak English.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 10:58:05 am
content: Quote from: EdoNork on April 02, 2015, 10:15:39 amWell... English must be the only language used because every single information we write could help others not in your country. Those who are not speaking english and dealing with EE are rare animals and they should learn this language ASAP!A nice idea could be to start some sections for people living in the same country... and discover they are living maybe in the same city.Info sharing for people living in the same country could be very useful, see my recent posts.If this will happen I think will be hard to keep English the standard language thow.For me, I just post something in the chat section and get all the international info I want.

author: ElektroQuark
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 11:06:51 am
content: There are many no EE here: hobbyist, enthusiasts, and from them to EEs.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 11:13:19 am
content: Impractical:- the need for extra moderation- isolation of groups of usersThe point of a forum is to have as many people collaborating as possible and the results of this collaboration are supposed to be available to as many people. By effectively splitting the forum into such sections you get less people per area. Also, the people who are multilingual will have to watch more forums at the same time.Whether we like the situation or not, some knowledge of English is absolutely necessary if you are serious (or even mildly interested) in electronics. There are MUCH better ways to improve your language skills than to look at a theme specific forum.David

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 11:30:13 am
content: Quote from: zucca on April 02, 2015, 10:58:05 amThat's my point!I want to know where to buy cheap and good quality equipment (I'm poor!), buy and sell from others, group buying stuff, planning workshops and meetings.It would be very interesting if other forums organize an interforum section and help others to discover people in their zones. I think of it as a geeky Facebook but without procrastinating, useful and.not owned by a single entity.I don't care about using written English and I would like to slowly hear nerdy stuff from other people in electronics if some friendly nerd visits my city (I'll invite you to a beer!).Quote from: daqq on April 02, 2015, 11:13:19 amEnglish surpassed Esperanto initial goals in an extreme and is slowly replacing native languages. There's a cultural isolation between people that understand English and those that don't. English takes stuff from lots of languages and uses a more simple syntax, that's advantage for science.I also see when a non-native express in English, it does in a less emotional and more logic way and that may help to focus on the task.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 11:59:33 am
content: There are specific-language sections on the Arduino forum. The German and Italian seem to be the most popular, but even those are rather puny compared to the rest of the forum in English. Is Google translate not sufficient for people who don't read English well enough? I know machine-translation isn't that great, but when I have needed it to understand websites in other languages, it worked well enough to get the majority of the content.One of my most favorite TV shows was a very interesting 7-part documentary series called "The Story of English". I learned many things, from it such as India being the largest English-speaking country, and there being more English-speakers in China than there are in the USA. And most of us probably already knew that English is the international language of air traffic control, etc. I think I will watch it again....https://youtu.be/7FtSUPAM-uA?list=PL6D54D1C7DAE31B36I happen to have been born and raised in an English-speaking country, so it was the default for me. Although I will probably need to start building up my Spanish vocabulary again (after decades of dis-use). I may be handling technical operations for a Spanish-language TV station, and maybe a whole international satellite network. It was pretty "exciting" to run audio for a live TV talk show in Spanish, especially when they started taking random phone calls on the show.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 12:05:38 pm
content: So who doubles Antonio Banderas when the movie is shown in Spain? does he do it?Yeah, kind of random but I always wondered. I guess I'll have to watch a movie he is on in Spanish

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 12:21:31 pm
content: There is still a significant amount of ADR (Additional Dialog Replacement) or "looping" as they used to call it. Where actors would come into a small sound studio and watch their shots on a screen and reproduce their dialog to be recorded "clean". With that kind of mechanism, it is a rather simple thing to record the dialog in any other language. Of course it is a cliche to see badly-dubbed movies like many early Japanese Samurai movies where they made no apparent attempt to match the words to the mouth movements.I remember staying at the apartment of a FOAF in Darmstadt where they were watching a movie on TV one evening. It was a Clint Eastwood movie dubbed into German and the voice actor they used for Eastwood had a high-pitched, reedy voice that just made it ridiculous to watch. I had to leave the room because I kept laughing (it wasn't a comedy movie).

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 12:22:15 pm
content: South Swahili or maybe Klingon?What's the problem? Simply ask about the best shops/places/whatever in your region. For example, someone else just asked about shops in Germany and got a lot of feedback.

author: ElektroQuark
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 02:13:20 pm
content: Quote from: miguelvp on April 02, 2015, 12:05:38 pmYes, he does.

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 02:18:45 pm
content: And he's awfully bad dubbig himself. But he's also a very overvalued actor, too.

author: PE1RKI
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 03:18:47 pm
content: please no

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 03:23:01 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on April 02, 2015, 02:55:18 pmI doubt it has any problem with it, but the database is not appropriately configured for English, let alone CJK.??oops, I broke it with an industry standard symbol again.

author: electr_peter
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 03:42:02 pm
content: I had some messages with the forum in the past. While this may be beneficial for some and some purposes, I do not support this idea. Few reasons:By share numbers and topic diversity, sections of other languages would not be as interesting.This forum has set very high standard on quality (no comparison to local forums).This forum is intended for (mostly) international technical topics. Discussion of local topics are not interesting for majority of forum users.If one cannot ask or write in English, he/she will find more help in local forums, not here.Not everyone has good language skills even in mother language (just look at local forums to understand the issue...). This relates to both grammar and question formulation.Buy/Sellsection should not to be localised. What is the point?New moderators have to be appointed.There is a risk that local forums can move/port discussions to this forum as a base.Local events for forum members can be organised via specialised posts or local forums.

author: elgonzo
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 04:20:12 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on April 02, 2015, 03:23:01 pmNope, it rather points towards the configuration of SMF and not an limitation/issue with the DBMS. Since version 2.0 it hasUTF-8 support. For whatever reason it is not enabled here - perhaps due to an upgrade from an older SMF version, i don't know... Personally i find UTF-8 support for this forum not that utterly important. The few times i had faced the lack of support for international characters (last that comes to my mind: Stanis?aw Lem) were not really a hindrance for communicating inpropergibberish English

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 06:05:26 pm
content: Quote from: elgonzo on April 02, 2015, 04:20:12 pmAnd yet, the forum character set is UTF-8.

author: elgonzo
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 06:13:38 pm
content: Quote from: mojo-chan on April 02, 2015, 05:40:48 pmThat would be an issue with either Unicode code points or the lack of appropriate fonts on the clients (machines running the web browser), and not an issue with the forum software nor the underlying DBMS...

author: elgonzo
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 06:35:19 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on April 02, 2015, 06:05:26 pmOops, you are right. I see here in my forum session a JavaScript variablesmf_charsetset to "UTF-8".The fact that international characters are replaced by question marks points towards a Unicode code point --> ASCII/local codepage conversion (mangled UTF-8 sequences would not result in question marks...). The charset of the DBMS not being set to UTF-8 should not affect UTF-8 sequences transmitted as simple strings (8-bit wide chars). I guess, either a Unicode-->ASCII/local codepage conversion happens somewhere in the forum software, or i was misled/confused by the SMF documentation and SMF actually transmits Unicode strings (and not UTF-8) to the DBMS, or something... (SMF is written in PHP, i just noticed... argh... that explains all...) In the end it doesn't matter that much, i guess

author: PeterFW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 07:36:25 pm
content: Bad idea, that seperates information, knowledge and users.Everyone needs to speak english, if they do not, they have to learn.There is nothing gained and much lost when you seperate people by language.In my ideal world everything and everyone on the internet would use english, well... it has not to be english but everyone should use the same language.Take a look at esperanto, interesing idea but not feaseable.English is a decent standard, it is very easy to learn compared to other leanguages.

author: BlueBill
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 07:42:08 pm
content: A multi language forum would be unmanageable.

author: elgonzo
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 07:48:49 pm
content: Quote from: mojo-chan on April 02, 2015, 07:27:05 pmThanks for the info. This will be on the list for my next loo read

author: Hydrawerk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 07:55:31 pm
content: I came here to practise English, too. Well, when doing electronics or computer stuff, you must speak some English.

author: electr_peter
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 07:57:02 pm
content: We will need to wait untiluniversal language translator* is available. Then there will be no language barriers at all.*device that translates any written or spoken language to any other perfectly.

author: BlueBill
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2015, 07:59:24 pm
content: Quote from: electr_peter on April 02, 2015, 07:57:02 pmTrue. It's still a tell the translator's broken when a poster uses the word "doubt" when they mean "question".

author: ivan747
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2015, 04:01:35 pm
content: As for Spanish, you can always visit Foros de Electronica, I'm sure the guys in there know where to get good cheap deals, and I'm sure you will find people from your country there, as well as you will right here on the EEVBlog forum.

author: Artlav
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2015, 04:42:21 pm
content: I propose to start with languagesupportin the forum software.I don't think it support any non-latin alphabets at all.I'm not sure i can write where i am - Reñaca - without a letter getting missed.And that's Spanish.If we try cyrillic, for all the parts and devices coming from the former USSR, it would be gibberrish.???That should be step one.Thenwe can consider international sections.EDIT: Nope, Spanish letters work.

author: electr_peter
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2015, 04:53:59 pm
content: PressReply> write some non latin symbols -> pressPreview-> looks good (!). PressPost-> looks like garbage??š??ž??Š??ŽSame is with forum messages (only preview is OK). Forwarded email messages also show non-latin symbols.Something is wrong with DB settings or it needs a good reset.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2015, 05:17:29 pm
content: SMF database only supports a limited set of the UTF-8 character set, while the preview will accept all characters that pass sanitisation ( hopefully, or this leads to another world of exploits), so the preview works till you post, which converts it to all UTF-8 and stores it in the database so it can be used to create the pages on demand.I suppose it can have the database converted to expand the set, but this may break older posts, and definitely will result in the forum being offline during the conversion process.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 03:19:34 pm
content: Incidentally there's plenty of Chinese EE forums out there, and they don't seem so interested in having an English section either.Keeping this an English-only site makes sense to me.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 03:31:15 pm
content: QuoteWhy should there be plans to add international forum sections? Do electrons flow differently for Japanese or Spanish speaking folks?Where do you stop? Do we need to have a section for short Chinese? Another section for skinny Japanese? How about Russians with red-purple hair? ...Electrons are electrons and nationality should be kept out of it, in my view.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 04:09:41 pm
content: We should introduce a gay section.

author: gildasd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 08:58:43 pm
content: We need an Arrogant French Section - AFS - in English.I'll moderate by deleting all the posts because I'm an arrogant French man.

author: elgonzo
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 09:08:47 pm
content: We need a cats section. Dave loves cats

author: gildasd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 09:24:33 pm
content: Quote from: elgonzo on April 04, 2015, 09:08:47 pmDoes a cat glow when a kilovolt current with a few hundred amperes pass thought it? Or does the water boil instantly leading to a thin layer of pussy being uniformly spread over the walls of the test chamber?

author: elgonzo
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 10:16:45 pm
content: Quote from: gildasd on April 04, 2015, 09:24:33 pmDepends on the cat rating, i guess

author: gildasd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 10:23:16 pm
content: Quote from: elgonzo on April 04, 2015, 10:16:45 pmThat explains the different colours and the stripes.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2015, 11:22:23 pm
content: There is a forum with over 6000 topics about electronics in my mother tongue. There are probably huge forums for the Chinese, Japanese, Russian or German or Spanish(and so on). If you want to chat about something, say your question in a way, that less people are able to answer it, there are obviously better ways to do it.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 05, 2015, 12:58:55 pm
content: "Do electrons flow differently for Japanese or Spanish speaking folks?" Yes, for English and Spanish speakers, electrons flow horizontally from left to right, for Japanese speakers, electrons flow vertically, right to left. For Russian speakers, the electrons flow in the same direction but some face backwards.

author: gildasd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2015, 02:07:20 pm
content: Quote from: GreyWoolfe on April 05, 2015, 12:58:55 pmAnd up side down, on the wrong side of the road, in Australia.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2015, 03:27:30 pm
content: Quote from: gildasd on April 04, 2015, 09:24:33 pmI laughed so hard I just woke up my wife. She's not amused but I am.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2015, 04:43:15 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on April 05, 2015, 03:27:30 pmFunny you should say that.....Testing a battery, MBC and finally a cat analogue with a supply with pretty close to that energy.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2015, 05:02:31 pm
content: Quote from: EdoNork on April 02, 2015, 10:15:39 amPerhaps you should ask Dave if he minds, if someone else does the translation and posts it somewhere else?

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2015, 05:08:46 pm
content: Quote from: Hero999 on April 05, 2015, 05:02:31 pmdo not use the YT subtitling, unless you are looking for some computer generated comedy. It does not work with any English other than a Midwestern US accent. On Australian English the text has almost nothing to do with the actual spoken subject, especially with Dave's voice.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2015, 06:09:07 pm
content: That would be funny but I was talking about someone doing the translation manually and adding the subtitles.

author: manzini
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2015, 01:44:52 pm
content: I think today is a minimum requirement for any basic education level. If for reasons of age or country language political context, don' have it and want to leave your small local parcel, learn it's mandatory. Today it is easier than ever.My first language is not English, but I develop a little reading and writing. I know that my expression isn't perfect and possibly for a native english is annoying my fault and my absurd mixed past, present and future in the same sentence. Also usually, due google translate, I use perfect words and expressions in english but are not common. I always appreciate the patience of who answers me.The only gap that I have is with the videos, listening is a big problem for me no matter how hard I try, I can't follow details and for example irony is my big handicap.I believe that a very effective cost/benefit solution, even help people with hearing problems or unfriendly circumstances for audio, such as public transport without headphones (I always forget them), it would simply subtitled (english of course) Dave videos. Youtube automatic translate for Dave videos it's a joke.Try to build their PSU, only listening the automatic subtitles(icon for explosions?)

author: timofonic
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2015, 01:57:53 pm
content: Quote from: manzini on April 06, 2015, 01:44:52 pmI have exactly the same issue as you, I would love to have English subtitles in Dave's videos.What about organizing a crowdsourcing campaign to transcribe all them?