It's the best of the web - and it is not in English

March 6, 2005 6:47 AM

Posting links to websites in languages other than English: previously discussed, but without clear guidelines. There's a great link I could post -- but even if the images are a key part of what makes that site's interesting, it's not in English. More inside.
posted by matteo to Etiquette/Policy at 6:47 AM (24 comments total)

I'm quite ambivalent about posting something on the Front Page if it's somehow against the guidelines: the post's about the Bovary Project, a project to digitize and transcribe the entire manuscript, with corrections, of Madame Bovary. All links would be in French, but then one could check out the jpegs of Flaubert's corrections, which seems cool enough.
posted by matteo at 6:53 AM on March 6, 2005

heh, the "Madame Bovary" link above is bad, this one's fixed. I'd also like to link to a massive newspaper story about the whole project, but it's in French too
posted by matteo at 6:56 AM on March 6, 2005

well, i'd say go for it, but also consider viewropa (if it's not been linked from there already) as they explicitly encourage a variety of languages.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:57 AM on March 6, 2005

how about posting it all, with a translations of whatever you can? (from babelfish, google, etc)

This actually would be the bestest pony ever, if we had a translation option here. It also would open up the non-english web for posting.
posted by amberglow at 7:08 AM on March 6, 2005

I say post it.
posted by ZippityBuddha at 7:17 AM on March 6, 2005

Oh sure, post it. As long as you mention it's not in English, what's the problem? It sounds very much best of the web. And lots of people here understand French anyway.

And amber, join the cult of firefox! There's a "translate" extension that will automagically translate any highlighted text for you. (not well, but that's another issue.)
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:24 AM on March 6, 2005

i am in firefox, but every time i try to install any extension at all for it, firefox ends up broken for some reason and i can't quit out of it, but also can't use it at all anymore
posted by amberglow at 7:43 AM on March 6, 2005

Post it. (Says me).
posted by Wolfdog at 7:49 AM on March 6, 2005

I think it's fine, as long as you contextualise it, which you just did.
posted by carter at 8:16 AM on March 6, 2005

Je conviens, signale ce mofo immédiatement!
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 8:31 AM on March 6, 2005

Gujarati chalse? Kem naee??
posted by Gyan at 8:36 AM on March 6, 2005

amberglow writes "i am in firefox, but every time i try to install any extension at all for it, firefox ends up broken for some reason and i can't quit out of it, but also can't use it at all anymore"

Export your bookmarks, then delete your FF profile, then import your bookmarks and manually restore your other settings. It's not exactly fun, but it does the job.
posted by orthogonality at 8:39 AM on March 6, 2005

I think DeepFriedTwinkies said he hates America. Foreign languages are trouble.

I don't see any reason why you shouldn't post the links, matteo. I don't think anyone even reads the links here anyway.
posted by Arch Stanton at 8:59 AM on March 6, 2005

thanks, ortho--i should do that before installing the extension, then restore after? won't i lose all my saved logins and stuff if i delete my profile?
posted by amberglow at 9:09 AM on March 6, 2005

Amber, I don't know if this might help but I was having terrible FF problems yesterday (it was crashing over and over after I tried to install the IEview extension) so I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it. My profile was still there without me doing anything, and the program stopped crashing.
posted by CunningLinguist at 9:20 AM on March 6, 2005

Oops, I meant to say I hate Journey. And onions. God bless America and the God-given right She offers folks like matteo to post in heathen tongues.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 9:57 AM on March 6, 2005

i think i'm going to live without extensions--i don't want to have to reinstall and re-login everywhere--i've had to do it a bunch already.
posted by amberglow at 9:59 AM on March 6, 2005

My €0,02: (note the comma)

I've struggled a bit with this question myself, for example when commenting in the offensive Dutch football chants thread. There, I couldn't find any English language source on the term I wanted to use, so I decided to flag the link with (NL) while adding another link in English which offers some background. In fact, the only FPP I made so far was prompted by the appearance of English translations of texts on the post's topic, even though I would have thought it postworthy and fit for an international audience on basis of the story alone.

I guess the point is that you want to make a post as accessible as possible to as large an audience as possible, and in practice that means we rely on English because of its high level of penetration in the world at large. After all, MeFi is American in origin, but I know and appreciate that a lot of Mefites, USian or no, like stories and perspectives from other places on the globe. I was inspired by y6's (of all people) words during the November Influx:

We're America-centric. But that's just the way the cards were dealt. We'd like to be more "global", and maybe you can help make that happen.

In short, I believe that it's essential to aim for intelligibility - MeFi is not Viewropa, even though both rock in their own ways. On the other hand, if we would limit ourselves to the anglophone part of the internet it would hardly jive with our ambitious motto, "Best of the Web". So post it if it's good - finding great stuff that we otherwise wouldn't know about is what brings us here. A great example was the English Cut post last week where the first comment was -

Something that I didn't know would interest me, until I read it. Now I think it's interesting. Thanks.

- which to me is MeFi in a nutshell.

But do go the extra mile to make sure people know what the hell you and your linkees are on about. I, for one, would definitely like to see more non-English language links here, with the posters translating some key bits inside the thread. I'll try to do my best on that as well.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:00 AM on March 6, 2005

Fopje flauw mopje!
posted by Armitage Shanks at 12:04 PM on March 6, 2005

Post it, but for Gob's sake keep anything to do with Babelfish a million miles from it. Translating Flaubert is a job for an artist.
posted by Wolof at 7:11 PM on March 6, 2005

Como un estadounidense solemente puedo leer Inglish y no quiero ver otras linguas sobre mis noticias! Tan horible!
posted by buzzman at 11:29 PM on March 6, 2005

non sono convinto che sia una buona idea, comunque grazie a tutti per l'aiuto
posted by matteo at 12:28 AM on March 7, 2005

Oui
posted by NinjaPirate at 1:50 AM on March 7, 2005

Bring to me the Bovary!
posted by dejah420 at 7:57 PM on March 7, 2005