Practice what you preach : being mutlilingual in the forum

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[This message is written in French, my native language, and translated into English. Feel free to read the most convenient version for you]

FR
Bonjour, j’ai eu récemment un échange très intéressant avec une collègue espagnole qui était volontaire pour rejoindre le réseau des ambassadeurs du Diamant en Europe mais n’ayant pas une grande facilité à s’exprimer en anglais, ce qui pourrait, disait-elle, être un obstacle à son implication.
Son message m’a fait pensé que nous promouvons le multilinguisme dans la communauté Diamant, sans toujours le mettre en pratique lorsque nous échangeons au sein de la communauté au niveau européen. Je pense par ailleurs que si tout le monde dans la communauté scientifique est capable de comprendre l’anglais, c’est beaucoup moins vrai en ce qui concerne la capacité de s’exprimer dans cette langue. Ce qui crée une asymétrie en terme d’accès à l’expression qui n’est pas sans rappeler les défaut du modèle Gold APC : la lecture est sans obstacle mais l’écriture est entravée.
Il me semble que la plus grande accessibilité des outils de traduction automatique devrait permettre à chacun de s’exprimer dans sa propre langue, s’il le souhaite, comme je le fais ici, et de fournir une traduction en anglais à la suite, permettant à tous d’accéder au contenu du message. Ma proposition n’est évidemment pas d’en faire une règle obligatoire mais une possibilité dont peuvent se saisir ceux qui le souhaitent.
Qu’en pensez-vous ?

EN
Hello, I recently had a very interesting conversation with a Spanish colleague who was keen to join the Diamond Ambassadors network in Europe but felt that her limited English skills could be an obstacle to her involvement.
Her message made me think that we promote multilingualism in the Diamond community, but we don’t always put it into practice when we communicate within the community at the European level. I also think that while everyone in the scientific community is able to understand English, this is much less true when it comes to the ability to express oneself in that language. This creates an asymmetry in terms of access to expression that is reminiscent of the shortcomings of the Gold APC model: reading is unhindered, but writing is impeded.
It seems to me that the greater accessibility of machine translation tools should allow everyone to express themselves in their own language, if they wish, as I am doing here, and to provide an English translation afterwards, allowing everyone to access the content of the message. My proposal is obviously not to make this a mandatory rule, but rather an option that those who wish to do so can take advantage of.
What do you think?

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We should indeed all try to do this!

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[This message is written in Spanish, my native language, and translated into English. Feel free to read the most convenient version for you]**

ES*

Pierre, I saw one of your posts using this approach, and I have to say I think it’s a brilliant idea—both for making linguistic diversity visible and for facilitating communication or signalling that the text may not fully convey the intended meaning.

I have been participating for years in groups where we use English as a lingua franca, and I always curse the limitations my English imposes on both my expression and comprehension.

The only issue I see with your proposal is that, if posts are long, the thread can become unbearable or even intimidating. So, with your permission, I will adopt your footnote to indicate the use of a language model, but I will adapt it in long messages to include only the English version.

In fact, Discourse has a module for automatic translation of posts when reading, so we could all write in our native language and just click a button. The only drawback is that translation AI APIs are paid, which would incur a cost… but I think the benefit is worth it.

EN

Pierre, I saw one of your posts using this approach, and I have to say I think it’s a brilliant idea—both for making linguistic diversity visible and for facilitating communication or signalling that the text may not fully convey the intended meaning.

I have been participating for years in groups where we use English as a lingua franca, and I always curse the limitations my English imposes on both my expression and comprehension.

The only issue I see with your proposal is that, if posts are long, the thread can become unbearable or even intimidating. So, with your permission, I will adopt your footnote to indicate the use of a language model, but I will adapt it in long messages to include only the English version.

In fact, Discourse has a module for automatic translation of posts when reading, so we could all write in our native language and just click a button. The only drawback is that translation AI APIs are paid, which would incur a cost… but I think the benefit is worth it.

3 Likes