New Portuguese & Spanish forums on SCN

[henrique_pinto]

Hi all,

I had posted this on the Moderators forum, but I guess here is a better place to leverage discussion.

FYI, as of yesterday, the Portuguese & Spanish forums were officially released to external users.

The links to the forum categories are:

Portuguese: /community [original link is broken]

Spanish: /community [original link is broken]

Please let us know your thoughts, opinions & feedback about them.

Best regards,

Henrique.

[Former Member]

Hello Henrique,

I herewith strongly request a German Language Forum since obviously a larg number of SAP users and customers speaks German. And one for each of the major Indian languages of course. And a French one, you know, many French still think that their language is supposed to be the world's number one language by nature. No doubt about the fact that our Arab speaking friends deserve their Arab language forums as well, to some it even is an unreasonable demand to use the language of those they don't love too much.

Not that I find a language segregation particularly useful in a global community, I am just interested in your arguments in favor or against any further language. And of course I really want my German Forum.

anton.

[suresh_datti]

>

> And one for each of the major Indian languages of course.  anton.

Oh yeah! Go for it! FYI, there are 22 Official languages under Schedule 8 of the Indian Constitution.

~Suresh

[henrique_pinto]

Hi Anton,

first, I'd like to remind that this message expresses my personal opinion, not necessarily SAP's.

In my opinion, it's not a matter of which is the language of the current SCN users.

It's rather a matter of which is the language of the potential users which never joined SCN because of the language barrier in the 1st place.

I think we can safely assume that the language is not a major barrier for germans & indians.

Unfortunatelly, the same cannot be said about a large ammount of Latin american users, or even chinese, korean etc. (you can see a list of all language-specific forums on the forums home page).

So, these forums are part of a strategy to make SCN more popular among LA users.

Of course, in the long term, the idea is to have such users to develop their english skills and contribute in the SCN forums as a whole.

Best regards,

Henrique.

PS: you can always send your requests directly to sdn at sap.com

[Former Member]

How about an SMS-Speaker Category with some catchy forum names in it?

[Former Member]

Hi Anton,

>And a French one, you know, many French still think that their language is supposed to be the world's >number one language by nature.

What does make you think this way, sacrebleu ??

By the way since the Norman invasion of England in 1066, the English language is just French with a strange prononciation !

"Dieu et mon droit" !!!

I think, I'm going to make some new friends...

Olivier

[henrique_pinto]

Hi Olivier,

but weren't the franks just another germanic tribe, in the first place?

BR,

Henrique.

PS: Making even more friends than you...

[former_member374]

>

> 
> And of course I really want my German Forum.
> 
> anton.

Hi Anton,

How much do you want 'your' German Forum?

Are you volunteering to moderate it?

Not promising anything, just checking

All the best, Mark.

[Former Member]

Anton:

You must remember one important thing...As Henrique already state...Most Latin American folks doesn't sign up to SCN because they just don't know English...English is not or is poorly teach in schools...

Also, even when India had a lot of people...You can't despite the fact that a lot of countries speaks Spanish...

Perú

Colombia

Venezuela

Chile

Ecuador

Guatemala

El Salvador

España

México

Bolivia

+Plus

Argentina

Uruguay

Paraguay

Honduras

Nicaragua

Panama

Costa Rica

Puerto Rico

and quite a few more

And as Brazil is an Latin American country, it makes sense to have a Portuguese forum...

I'm not saying that German is less important than those languages, but you can't tell me that most German doesn't know English... -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

Note: A few more contries added :-)... Juan

[former_member184657]

Dont you guys know that Sanskrit is the Mother of ALL languages

pk

PS: Going to make the whole world my friends...except for a few million folks in ABAP General who have their daggers drawn out for me

[Former Member]

Hi Anton,

do you really want a German forum? I am thinking to cover all the dialects spoken. So I guess you surely would like a austrian folder as much as I would like to have a palatinate forum. What do the bavarians think and the saxons and the swabians (who as you might know know everything but german)?

Siggi

[markus_doehr2]

Dont you guys know that Sanskrit is the Mother of ALL languages

According to my knowledge Sanskrit belongs to indogermanic languages but it´s a separate brace (indo-iranian - indo-aryan). However, you´re right if you say that it´s the mother of all Indian languages (apart from Urdu)

And: Devanagari looks great - would love to see a VA01 in that

Markus

[andreas_mann3]

against.

why do you assist another fragmentation?

greetings

Andreas

[Former Member]

Devanagari looks really nice.

सप् चोम्मुनित्य्

For me, choosing certain languages over others for pure aesthetical reasons is much more reasonable than selecting languages for jingoistic (had to look that up, hope it means the same as the german 'chauvinistisch') reasons.

Actually, the assumption that German or Indian Language native speakers have a certain English-gene and thefore an natural advantage when learning english is simply wrong. IMHO, they're just more willing to put in the necessary effort to participate in a global community rather than promoting 'their' language.

Mark, of course it would be my pleasure to serve the community with moderation if there is a certain need for it, I just, obviously, am not really convinced of the idea to foster segregation based on 'old world schemes' within a global community.

and, just not to become deliberately misinterpreted by some, I am strongly advocating to live, accept and even foster cultural diversity within a global community because it is a strong intellectual asset to have different views on one and the same thing. just the concept of language diversity does not fit into a global community which is very much about communication. and i do not really believe in some hitchiker's guide's babelfish solving this problem someday but I rather believe that every such effort will lead to something which Pieter Breughel managed to visualize so magnificently in 1563.

my 2 cents,

anton

Edited by: Anton Wenzelhuemer on Dec 17, 2008 12:32 PM (small typo)

[henrique_pinto]

Anton & Andreas,

I still don't see your point.

Who ever talked about fragmentation??

It's not like the current users will ever stop discussing/blogging/wiking in english.

And it's also not likely that someone with enough english skills will primarily ask questions on the language-specific forums, since the probability/time of receiving an answer on the english forums is way higher/shorter.

The new forums will bring, on 99.9% of the cases, users which would never join SCN in other terms.

So, I still don't see fragmentation here. On the contrary, I see congregation and the unique possibility to bring more users which would have never joined SCN in the 1st place.

Of course, current users will take a while to answer the questions from such new users, but they'll never stop participating in the english forums.

BR,

Henrique.

PS: Anton, it's not about genes or anything. It's just in LA, generally english is not a subject well taught in schools like in Germany & India.

[Former Member]

I agree with Henrique...For example, I can wrote blogs in Spanish...But I keep writing them on English, because I got my personal blog.

Same thing should happen with both Spanish and Portuguese forums...People who doesn't speak English, would feel more comfortable writing on their own language. People who speak English, would still post on the regular forums because the response time would be higher and shorter.

I know were supposed to live on a globalized world, but sadly, English is not an "official" language in Latin American countries...In Peru for example, 80% of my colleagues doesn't know English...Or at least they only know "ABAP" English LOL

Besides, it just a couple of small forums...Not the whole SCN site managing in another languages -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

[Former Member]

just kidding!

[Former Member]

Tja, die Realität hat uns mittlerweilen schon überholt und unsere oberkreativen Marketingwuzzis aus der B1-Ecke haben deutschsprachige Blogs und Foren gestartet. Wenn ich mir die einzelnen Beiträge allerdings so durchlese, dann wundere ich mich ein wenig über die verwendete Sprache. Ist das vielleicht tatsächlich ein schwäbischer Blog, der uns auf die neuen Foren hinweist? Oder was ist ein Willkommens Packet? Vielleicht sollte man aber auch den deutschsprachigen Kontributoren(sic!) ein Rechtschreibprüfprogramm unter den Baum legen? Oder ist die Originalsprache des Programmes doch Englisch und nur das Übersetzungsprogramm noch nicht so fit? Man weiss es nicht...

Ob dem Autor des Blogs eigentlich aufgefallen ist, dass der Inhalt sämtlicher Screenshots englisch ist? Schwäbischer Blog mit englischen Screenshots ... oida, des is leiwand. Sorry, ein wenig österreichischer Dialekt.

Naja, schönen abend beisammen. Und falls jemand das hier nicht versteht, keine Sorge, ist nicht wichtig. Nur eine u03C0όu03BBu03B5u03BCu03BFu03C2. Und ausserdem habt ihr ja eh مترجم جوجل . Also, null problemo.

[marilyn_pratt]

Of course one can get a general nonsense of what sense is written here by using Babelfish at altavista.com. I struggled with the Arabic on translate Google which came out as gibberish. مترجمجوجل = Mtorgomjojl

But the greek wasn't just greek to me. u03C0όu03BBu03B5u03BCu03BFu03C2 translates as war.

Hope this isn't a declaration of one, but a peaceful joke.

Translation follows:

Tja, the reality has us mittlerweilen already overhauled and our upper-creative Marketingwuzzis from the B1-Ecke to have German-language of blog and forums started. If I read myself however in such a way the individual contributions, then I am surprised a little at the used language. Is that perhaps actual a Swabian blog, which refers us to the new forums? Or which is Willkommens a Packet? Perhaps one should in addition, the German-language Kontributoren (sic!) a right write test program under the tree put? Or is the source language of the program nevertheless English and only the translation program not yet so fit? One does not know itu2026 Whether actually it noticed to the author of the blog that contents of all Screenshots are English? Swabian blog with English Screenshotsu2026 oida, is leiwand. Sorry, a little Austrian dialect. Naja, beautiful evening together. And if someone does not understand that here, no concern, is not important. Only one u03C0όu03BBu03B5u03BCu03BFu03C2. And in addition have you eh مترجمجوجل. Thus, zero problemo.

[markus_doehr2]

Translation follows:

<...>

lol

That was really good - now translate back to english and see if you still understand something...

Apart from that I can understand that "language thing" pretty well. We are actually in a likewise situation, we want to get an overview of SCM, the presentations available at http://service.sap.com/scm are English only and together with the fact of being not really English but "Sapnglish" (in sense of terminology) we simply can´t pass them over to the people to-be-involved in that project, one could even give them Chinese ones - same effect; we´d see rising eyebrows and big questions marks instead of halos above their heads.

I called the headquarter, the "Documentation Research Department" (something like this really exists), they told me that those presentations are first created in English and translated then to German and other languages. As of today I haven´t received anything - they seem to be non-existent.

So being German I would of course propagate and welcome a German forum but to be meaningful it would need to consist of at least all the major (product-)forums that are also there in English (and in <insert-language-here>) - which is IMHO not possible.

Markus

[Former Member]

I think I'll sit on the fence for a while...

@ Anton: Bas, ya habibi. Yani... ehna shuf, wa (something similar to "work area") ablekda mumkin al hagada kwais aw mushkela kbir. Mesh aiseen.

El loriat handi kwais haga lehl ragul wa katkuta al gamila. Ana fehem.

Fil maktab al abap, ana aref ktheer habib - hom einsien nur, eis ful, eis masbut, eis jasmin.

Forza zaida

Julius

(if it is not possible for someone to recognize which language this is, then I will try to re-translate it back again - but it was a long, long time ago, and the guy who taught me this language was trying to sell me a post card when he landed himself a realy nice job).

[marilyn_pratt]

I understand every 3 or 4th word of this transliterated Arabic. But that's not enough to really understand your meaning. Let's have a translation please.

[Former Member]

hi marilyn,

the greek word reads as 'polemos' which is supposed to mean polemics in english.[polemics|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemic]

for the arab 'word' google translate was a hot pick. just apply it twice, i.e. google translate google translate.

the rest of your effort nicely illustrates the quality of babelfish, although the last two lines are understandable given the short explanations above

kind regards, anton

[matt]

Oh come on. Everyone understands English, so long as it is spoken LOUDLY AND CLEARLY to johnny foreigner.

... I've met many Germans who don't speak any English - even though we share 60% of the same words (with minor consonantal and vowel shifts). I've never, however, met any French who don't speak English. I mean, they pretend they don't, but when their ears are assaulted with my execrable French accent, then they soon switch. Here's what happened to one hapless tourist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysg_FoWOue8

matt

[Former Member]

>

> ...  I've met many Germans who don't speak any English 

Thomas Zloch?

>

>I've never, however, met any French who don't speak English. I mean, they pretend they don't

Yes Correct.Have a look at [this one |http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPr_LIBPf_U&NR=1]:-)

[Former Member]

Even if you understand most of the English language, and speak most of it as well; there is always that little room for error when you cannot [think in English|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT86iWiH2mI&feature=related] ...

[Former Member]

But the Video in Right Scroll is equally Funniest

[Former Member]

Henrique:

I already told you this by mail...But I think it would be good idea to reply here...

I think it's an awesome move from SCN...Giving more access to Latin American user will become in a grow of Latin American users using and contributing to SCN...

I already post an announcement on my personal blog, so I hope to be able to see this rising very soon.

Greetings,

Blag.