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As usual, a post with a simple topic and request has spawned several other discussions. Could we just pause a moment a review our situation?
1. XOOPS is used in many countries by people speaking many different languages.
2. While it is wonderful to have something that appeals to this broad range of people, it presents different opportunities in each of those different cultural environments.
3. Language is only one barrier to effective communication. Word choice, word order, word combinations, inflections and intonation, culture, and presentation all combine to make up the message. Hell, even written English is different than spoken English!
4. Human translation is always better than automated translations. Many prefer to seek help from someone who communicates effective in a language they understand, not a cyber-translated page on a web site.
5. XOOPS sites have been launched around the world in a variety of languages to meet the needs of specific groups of people. None of them did it to become 'officially recognized', but they were born out of a sincere desire to help people.
6. As much as one might think we would benefit from XOOPS.world, or XOOPS.universe, or whatever, do not think for one minute (or even 10 minutes, as was mentioned earlier) that we can presume to shortcut the effort to support people of all walks of life, living in all parts of the world, having different cultural experiences and speaking different languages.
7. What many people fail to understand, is that XOOPS.org has, by default, been the English support site in addition to being the project site. Let's face it, if we continue in this manner, we will fail as a project AND a support site - neither is done well here. The most successful sites are the local support sites, run by the community they support.
Now for the subjective part of this post (I speak for myself, only) - before I would even think of posting something in another language I don't speak, I would seek advice from a native-speaker of that language. Posting automagically translated text can lead to more miscommunication than you can possibly imagine and only widens the gap between 2 groups of people.
The Communication Team has vowed not to make such assumptions. Translations are only posted by members fluent in that language and we are engaging the other local sites to assist in this effort. Only in this way will we draw together the people of XOOPS from around the world. The response has been wonderful! Thank you, one and all!