NationStates Jolt Archive

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=428542

Post 15 is a translation of the first posts in what is so far nothing but a smiley spam thread.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9146770&postcount=38

Just turned a bit more ugly with this post by "SERBIJANAC" (= "Serb" or "Serbian").

Literally translated it means "get into 3 beautiful you and your utopia... you Croatians will see your god sooner or later" and when the idioms are converted into English equivalents it ends up being "fuck off, you and your utopia... you Croatians will meet your maker sooner or later". :rolleyes:

While there are quite a few smilies on that thread, there is also a fair amount of untranslated text ... and at this point, we have but a single translator. I'm assuming that your identification is correct re: Croatian.

I ran the page through This Croatian translator (http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?type=url&url=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.jolt.co.uk%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D428542&text=&from=cro&to=eng) and saw enough to justify locking the thread. I can't count on the rest of it enough to issue official warnings. If somebody has a better site, please feel free to share.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9147037&postcount=51

Fris, this brings up a question I've had for awhile. I don't see anything in the official rules banning/allowing posts in other languages. What's the verdict on this? I guess, in this age of global interconnectivity and access to online translators, that it wouldn't be too difficult to spot excessive profanity in foreign language posts. More subtle things, like trolling and trollbaiting, however, might be more difficult. We seem to have a lot of debate about those violations even when they're in English. Will the mods just err on the side of caution here and issue warnings when they see questionable posts in languages other than English?

For the record, my native language is French, but it is so widely known in the Anglophone world that I think it would be fairly easy to bust a trolling post in French (hell, some of the mods probably speak French quite well). But, as the above case illustrates, sometimes nuances and idiomatic expressions can be lost, especially when the language is further removed from English, like Croatian, or Korean.

Just my curiosity.

There are several long-running non-English threads here, and if they are causing problems, they're doing so very quietly. If someone brings a non-English thread to our attention as rulebreaking, we'll do our best to translate and understand the problem. Otherwise, we tend to let them do what they will. We don't and won't have restrictions on language, though it strikes me as common courtesy to post primarily in English on an English language site. Nonetheless, there is no reason to restrict our Dutch, French, or whatever linguistic sub-communities. It's their game too.

Mind you, you shouldn't underestimate the education, background, and ability of the current mod squad in spotting rulebreaking. While I'm sure some has snuck by us, plenty hasn't. We do the best we're able, and that seems to be working.