Please write in English!

[Cathodion]

Dear Neighbors, (i'm dutch)

 

Its great to see many of you active on the forum, but unfortunatly most of the world will not be able to read your information, and that's really bad for a project that's just starting. I'm afraid it will scare off many potential community members, and we need those to get on*board* while the current momentum is good.

 

To be honest, my knowlegde of the German language isn't very good either, so I'm having a hard time understanding it too.

 

My suggestion is to communicate purely in English on the forum. I hope you will agree with me.

 

Kind regards,

Geert Schuring

Java Developer from The Netherlands.

[batti]

Hi Cathodion,

 

I can understand your post.

We prefer when people write in English,

but it seems that many German customers would be scared

if the have to post in English, too.

Therefore we cannot remove the German part of the forum.

I hope you can understand.

 

But we will do everything possible to increase the attraction

of the English forum.

 

Cheers,

 

Bastian

[Nic]

BTW, Google translate nearly everything

 

I am watching the English forum, too, but there isnt lot of traffic

Because the guys from Tinkerforge did a good job to write the doc fully in English, in my opinion its more a matter of time if more and more people around the world are getting interesting... In this case it makes sense to write in English.

[Nifty]

It might be a solution to integrate Google Translate into the Forum, thats not very complicated..

 

But i must admit - i prefer the German language as it is mutch faster to get to a point. 

 

Best Regards

Nifty

[RossMarsden]

Hello from Wellington, New Zealand.

 

I cannot read or speak German, but I have been following the German side of the forum with the help of automated translation in Google Chrome browser.

The translation sometimes reads a bit strange, but there is no trouble understanding the meaning. 

 

Would there be a problem in merging the English and German forums, and let the browsers translate as required? Maybe limit posts to either German or English. Not sure how automated translation would cope with a third language (Dutch?) in a page of English+German translated to all English.

[Felix]

Hi there,

we used to have the same discussion during another project a couple of years ago. It turned out, that some of the guys there, who were able to understand both languages, volunteered for writing some kind of weekly summary of the most interesting topics.

This was very much apprechiated and we called it the "Forum Gazette".

Maybe we'll find some members who would make the effort to do something like this here as well.

 

[Xenna]

I fully agree with the topic starter. Three quarters of the forum posts including some of the most valuable info is in the German section. (thankfully I can read German).

 

I think you are seriously limiting your world wide appeal here. Surely all the German guys (and galz?) can read and write English?

 

Compare this to another open hardware project that I've bought from: OpenPicus. An Italian made WIFI connected microcontroller. Ecellent product, like your bricks, but for a different application.

 

Look at their community:

 

http://community.openpicus.com/forum

 

Now, please, imagine that 3/4 of their forum messages were in Italian. Would that product look as attractive to you? It sure wouldn't to me. Now, the English on their site isn't always the greatest quality, but at least it's understandable for Americans and Asians that speak English.

 

Don't underestimate the importance of a forum. It's where us buyers look before buying a product to get a feel of the quality and the support of the product.

 

Having all info in English is good for your international sales. And good sales are good for your current users because it keeps the product and support alive. So, in the end posting in English is good for your German speaking buyers as well.

 

(IMHO Google Translate is a joke)

 

[borg]

In general i agree. But one of the groups our hardware is very appealing to are pupils that want to learn a programming language. With some Bricks and Bricklets thrown in, learning a programming language can be a lot more fun.

 

This group especially may not be comfortable in english and needs native language support.

 

Currently we are mostly selling to Germany (~80%). That is probably the case because of the bigger media respose we had in Germany. I expect that the numbers will shift in the future and then there will automatically be going on more in the english language forum.