24th Day

Commenting in a Foreign Language

It seems that I’ve been doing it since the Challenge began; today, I should comment on a Portuguese post, for a change! I’ve also added the Google Translation widget and I surely would like to keep a double version of the blog.

How does it feel to engage in such a demanding writing task in a foreign language? I think it depends on how seriously you have studied that language, on your personal sensitiveness and attraction towards certain languages, on how much you value communication with different cultures.

Personally I feel that the fact of reading in English through all the challenge helps me a lot to build my sentences when the moment comes to write a comment or a post; the automated spelling correction is also being precious to me.

Perhaps it turns out to be a very evident solution for small countries: “go global or disappear”. To go global one must think in English; I should add that in my country there is a genuine love for foreign languages and distant cultures besides our economical, political and cultural need to follow the rhythms of History in the noble English language.

I’ve looked for some Spanish blogs that are linked to the Challenge and found in “El Caparazón” that the first Blogging language in the world is Japanese , with 37% of blog posts, shortly followed by English. In a brief delay, Spanish will take the second place…perhaps we will have to learn one more language, yet, to “go completely global.”

In this Blog, I’ve read about web3.0, semantic web, the advent of microblogging versus blogging, Twine – a semantic web tool – all things new to me, but not the Spanish language itself, so near to Portuguese that they became transparent to one another.

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4 thoughts on “24th Day

  1. Pingback: Finishing My Homework as The Comment Challenge Comes To An End | Mobile Technology in TAFE

  2. Well at this stage I should ask what you think I said? Any way it was all nice and was just saying that I feel bad that we often talk about being American centric or Aussie Centric but we are all really English centric. And I think it is a shame that we expect people “to go global one must think in English”. Hoping this task will help others remember that it is now truly a global community.

  3. Thank you,@Sue for all your care; I will try to correct the Google translation, although it’s partly more a matter of guessing than of correcting:
    Sue Waters said:
    Penso que é pena que os falantes da língua inglesa dêem ocasião a que se exerça esta pressão sobre as pessoas que falam outras línguas: “Para entrar na globalização é preciso pensar em Inglês”. Muitas vezes se diz que as pessoas que escrevem em blogs são demasiado centradas no que é americano ou então que são falantes Aussi centradas no Inglês, mas como estamos realmente demasiado centrados no Inglês. Esperemos que esta tarefa faça com que as pessas levem mais em consideração as outras culturas.
    Perdoem-me a minha má tradução (espero que não seja muito má), mas permitam-me que ponha a culpa no Google. Assim, as pessoas apenas terão de ler este comentário usando um dispositivo de tradução.”
    As you see, Sue, it sounds different from Google’s translation and even so it sounds “funny” in Portuguese; I daren’t change anything else, fearing to get away from the original meaning. Still, I’m not sure about some sentences, I just have tried to follow the thread of a possible meaning through the obscure amount of Portuguese words that Google ingenuously displayed.
    The other day, when received a shorter message from you, I’ve tried to translate it back to English through Google, but it didn’t seem to recognize its own work: the new version was chaotic in English too.
    So, for the moment, I should welcome this friendly use of Google translation, but we must be aware of its limits: the automated translation still requires the intervention of a human translator, mainly if the conversation goes beyond a very simple interaction.
    Ines

  4. Penso que é uma pena que o Inglês como um orador que fazemos lugar esta pressão sobre as pessoas que falam outras línguas para “ir globais um deve pensar em Inglês”. Muitas vezes as pessoas vão falar sobre blogueiros ser demasiado centrada americano ou Aussie centric Inglês oradores, mas como estamos realmente demasiado centrada Inglês. Esperemos que esta tarefa irá tornar as pessoas consideram cada outras culturas mais.

    Perdoem-me para a minha má tradução (espero que não seja muito ruim), mas permite que o Google culpa. Então, as pessoas apenas terá de ler este comentário usando um tradutor

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