Jon ! Boss !

Don’t you think it is not highest time for translating EDUFIRE into other languages ? As a French tutor I am ready to translate this site for free into French. I am sure this would multiply Edufire’s impact ! I am sure you will find other members ready to invest in Edufire for the other languages.
Here are the top languages in the world :
1 Chinese (937,132,000)
2 Spanish (332,000,000)
3 English (322,000,000)
4 Bengali (189,000,000)
5 Hindi (182,000,000)
6 Arabic (174,950,000)
7 Portuguese (170,000,000)
8 Russian (170,000,000)
9 Japanese (125,000,000)
10 German (98,000,000)
11 French (79,572,000)

Patrick that is such a wonderful idea that only problem that I can see with that is that not all of us know french (myself included) and if we have users in other languages posting in their language that barely anyone would be ab;e to understand them unless you were ready on call.

However there might be a side I am missing and if so might I propose you post this in the ideas section? =)

It would be like any website translated into many languages I think. They would basically be seperate websites in different languages, and maybe they could also contain the links to edufire in English so people can have access to all possible tutors. But I don’t know, that would kind of fragment the edufire community. Perhaps we could have just the forums page in different languages…. We already have a thread completely in Spanish on edufire, but people just discover it by chance, I mean they won’t be aware of it just by signing up with the website. So if we had forums in different languages, each would basically do its own thing. All the threads in the Spanish forums would be or it’s possible that they be on totally different subjects than those from the English-based forums. This would still fragment edufire in some measure, but I think we could easily get in touch with the other-language edufire users. Though we could keep the four main forum subdivisions of Fireside Chat, Introductions, etc. And it would be a good idea to translate some key forum posts (topics having to do with help in edufire, technical issues, FAQs, etc).
So perhaps people could come to edufire.com and when they hover over the ‘forums’ link, a little menu could drop down with all the different language forums.
So that’s my idea, because like Lewis said, it would be hard for a community-based website like edufire to function when people are speaking whatever language they please, yet if the edufire was seperated into multiple websites based on language, it would be torn into different pieces. Maybe ‘torn’ isn’t the right word, too violent. Just seperated. Because it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, I suppose I just like the idea of one big, happy family hehe :)
And Patrick, à votre santé (is this the right way to say ‘cheers’?) for bringing up such an important topic.

Hey, as a tutor who reads and writes French, I too am ready to translate this site for free into French! ;)

But I can’t imagine why I would. . . .

As more and more people become eduFire users, what I believe we’ll start doing is to create forum threads in different languages, like the one in Spanish to which August L. referred.

But as yet we can only make individual threads. We could make a forum for each language under on the forums page, so in addition to Fireside Chat, etc., below that there would be Español, Français, Português, Nihongo (don’t know how to write it in Japanese), etc. What do you all think?

It’s a good idea August however remember that we have very many different teachers on here and there are so many languages out there. Of course creating a forum for something like ‘Esperanto’ would seem silly at this moment as there is only one tutor and only one person I know who’s interested in it.

This idea is good but seems a little half-baked, It’ll be a good topic for you to discuss in the Tutor town hall =)

Hey Patrick,
I agree, I think it’s a great idea, and something that has been given lots of thought. I’m sure it will happen eventually, but right now I think the focus is getting this portion of eduFire working for now, and then expanding out from there. Translating seems simple at first, but there’s so much it changes and will require different talents / resources after it happens.

I love it, and hope it happens sooner rather than later, but I don’t think it will happen really soon. I’d love to see China, Korea, and Japan eduFires….Lots of people there wanting to learn English!

Kudos, Koichi.

Thank you for summarizing the major problems, Koichi!

(I didn’t have the patience. . . .)

Hey guys. First of all, I’m blown away by the offers to help translate this site. I think it’s a fantastic idea. Koichi is right that while making this site accessible to many languages is in the master plan, it’s important for us to properly plan that out. For instance, we have to think about what will happen when new pages get put up, pages change, etc.

Facebook recently rolled out some very cool stuff where many of their users translated the site into various languages. It worked really well. Granted Facebook has a few more users than we do (just a few…. :)).

This is something that we’re definitely very excited about when the time is right and again I’m honored and more than a bit humbled by the offers to help with this!! You guy totally and completely rock. :)

In addition : I think that I was somewhat misunderstood by some people. So I am going to precise the idea :
What about potential students willing to learn English if they can not understand at all English. They come here and go away. And don’t think that the world speaks English ! Out there many people are unable to speak English ! Why do you think Google does exist in so many languages ?
Now I understand Jon’s point of view when he is speaking about stabilizing the “platform” before all. But remember that this site right now is working in a kind of closed circle that does not admit non-english speakers ! I just see the stats : 67% of the visitors are from the USA ! And the majority of the tutors are also from the USA ! Are Americans going to learn English ? Strange situation !

I see where Patrick is coming from and it just so happens that a student contacted me about 10 minutes ago regarding setting up a session, but his English is quite poor. Therefore, I replied in English and his native language using the website listed below. I know it’s not an answer to the overall problem in terms of the software development necessary, as Jon pointed out, but for now it’s my lifeline :o)

http://www.stars21.com/translator/czech_to_english.html

@Abby: That’s a cool site. Thanks for sharing your “lifeline.” :)

THANK YOU ABBY !

Sometimes I get the feeling that some people do not understand my ANGLITCH !!!

:-)

I do agree with the idea to translate to own language the platform of edufire.
Consider me a candidata to italianazation. I am italian native.

Viva l’Italia ! Viva l’Europa ! Viva la olda Europa !

Edited due to violation of Terms of Service by Jon Bischke on 10/28 @ 3:13 PM PDT.

You are funny PaTRICK! ….after three violations, Jon might not trust you to translate tHE website until he learns French…. just kidding of course; ca va? depuis votre humour je vous pensais interterrestriel-interplanetaire!…. You are an exquisite poliglot and etimologist, and for sure many other things taht I’ll have a chance to learn as time goes on…. Do you have a couple of motivational ideas for me to start out a Latin language club at a local high school in Denver?
on “Why Latin?” I know that if you get going you’d never stop: just three points then, if you have the time. Merci bien de M. Covi! ciao

On the topic of translating our website: I submitted the other day the idea of having the logo multilingual, just to attract the search engines and get free advertising; so, the more we tranlate, the more we advertise…. A focused description of our multilingual and crosslingual services could accompany the logos and perhaps link these same logos with the intereswted people….
Bonne chance!
silvio

Motivation ? Yeah ! Latin is one of the base of the human language !
Only one silly but true example : even Chinese uses the latin alphabet (pinyin).
In my first post at the top of this page you can see that the most spoken languages use Latin words :
2 Spanish (332,000,000)
3 English (322,000,000)
7 Portuguese (170,000,000)
8 Russian (170,000,000)
9 Japanese (125,000,000)
10 German (98,000,000)
11 French (79,572,000)

Sounds like a good idea. When edufire is ready to translate, I’ll be more than happy to help with the Japanese side of things ^^

That is very kind of you Michael!