Whenever I join a forum, I make this post (although I try to write it anew each time).
I think that an ESL (English as a Second Language) subforum is always a good idea, as someone who is ESL themself (although my English in fine, IMO). I have been on forums with marvelously intelligent people, who are IMO, clearly intelligent and informed, who have a lot to contribute, but who cannot, because their English is simply not up to the task.
I think an ESL subforum, a place for people to “prepare” posts, with feedback from members of this community with a better handle on the English language, to make sure they are cogent/legible, is always beneficial to a forum, given the international nature of the internet.
Just to let you know, the new version of SC that we are building will be fully internationalized, so we are doing what we can to support people from different language communities.
It would be nice to offer language support here as well. We have had a number of messages from people struggling with English.
I have thought in the past of offering dedicated forums for different languages. We could offer support to set up the forum, integrate with SC and offer tech support. But we would need local language speakers to run it and moderate it. So far we haven’t followed up on this idea, but it is still possible.
I will give some thought to possible ways to offer better language support to people here. Meanwhile, any suggestions are welcome.
[quote]“The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix.”
It is a universal translator that neatly crosses the language divide between any species. The book points out that the Babel fish could not possibly have developed naturally, and therefore it both proves and disproves the existence of God [/quote]
i think it’ll rather if not divide then separate people instead of uniting and bringing together, facilitating cultural exchange, it’s only thanks to common language that people from different parts of the world are able to interact on this and many other anglophone forums
apropos Babel tower, even if its fiction, it’s a cool apologue
