Moderators need to be able to read everything you write to make sure it’s not unsuitable for the forums. If we can’t, we have to assume the worst and consider the post a breach of the forum guidelines. Posts not in English are subject to deletion.
Note: an extra version in English is not good enough, as a moderator can’t verify that the non-English text is the same as the English one.
Edit…surely that’s as clear as can be?
Edit2…the biggest question of course is actually spotting a greater rarer moderator
Not to mention that you actually need to also hire and pay moderators/translators who will control the forums and translate blue posts. For all of those languages.
Why have one forum for the most well known/understood international language in the world, when you can have 50 different forums in 50 different languages. English is now taught in schools from the first year in elementary school. If you don’t know English, you probably can’t even play/understand the game itself.
Depends on how you ask them. If you say “wth are you speaking/writing in a different language I can’t understand” is to them also rude. If someone would ask instead “what are you talking about in that language” it is not offensive in any way and actually just asking for the context.
I can’t agree on this personally.
And that is true of course, but if those people have no Forum for them and for their own native language then you should’t be surprised if they sometimes use it in other-language-forums because they have no main forum for their language.
That’s to me like pushing cylinder shapes into a square shape in kindergarten. It may fit but is still not right in the first place.
I am fully aware of that. When I said “if those rules make sense is the other question” I meant that some rules can outdate and could require some editing.
You yourself said that your native is not present as an own forum. So, as a question to you: Speaks and writes everyone in your country English that well as you do?
If not, think about this:
They are not good at English
They are forced by the guidelines and rules to write in the language of the forum they are currently using.
They have to use forums of other languages, because they have not one for their own native or not use forums at all. (basically limiting for certain players the ability to give feedback about the game and discussing topics about it).
Sorry that I didn’t had the time yet to look up their comments and translate it. It doesn’t matter anyways because as they are Czech and Slovak, it doesn’t change the argument.
Ok, that is a very good point and I am not arguing against that.
But still it isn’t a fair experience for every not english-speaking person either.
Edit:
That is not entirely true, considering there are also translations for other languages of the game.
They probably can’t. But I would argue that most people in the targeted demographic (teens and young adults) can speak it decently, or at least understand it very well. When I was in elementary school, we started learning English in the third year. Now from what I’ve heard, it already starts in the first year. So by the time you can even play WoW, you’ve been learning English for at least 7 years. It’s taught in every elementary school, in every high school, and also in every university.
I don’t see any Czech/Slovak translations of the game. I could find some that are halway-done, for Wrath of the Lich King private servers. Not very helpful. The languages that are in the game have their own forums.
It’s simply how it works, and this is the most effective solution. You can’t please everybody.
Usually I just jokingly say “Yeah, I totally agree”, obviously hinting at the fact that I have no idea what was just said. Usually the other person chuckles and explains themselves, then all is good.
Agree to disagree then. I would never speak my language in a group of people who can’t understand me without telling them why I’m doing it. Hence even when our favourite paladin starts barraging me with insults in Slovak, I always respond back in English, if I respond at all.
Some do have their own forums, and they might as well not exist with how dead they are.
But then again, why can’t they use Google translate to make a post in English when they do need to make a post about something? It’s the same argument as others having the option to translate the other languages to English, except in this case it’s one person translating for others, not relying on hundreds of other to translate it themselves.
Again, it makes the most sense to have one English forum for everyone, because most people on the internet are somewhat proficient in English, no matter where they’re from, while the same doesn’t apply for any other languages.
Speak Serbian here and only a tiny fraction of people might understand you and reply, if you get a response at all. Speak English and most people will understand you just fine.
I’ve talked about that in this thread as well. It’s still not the majority of Asia as the person tried to claim. It’s pretty much exclusively China and a handful of other countries, of which most have a second official language anyway. For example Singapore has English as one if it’s official languages too alongside Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
Yes. This is Blizzard’s property, they can do anything they want with it, and they can set any rules they like. Is this the first time in your life you experienced terms of service?
If I came to your house and trashed it, and said “bohoo, the law says you can’t do this, let’s obey, let’s be sheep”, would that be okay? You’re delusional.
You have the energy of people who cough on supermarket workers because your freedom is too oppressed if you have to wear a mask.
It’s European players, Russians, African players(Had a guy from South Africa in my raiding guild in wotlk and 2 people in cataclysm) and players from the Middle East. I also used to play with some guy back in TBC/wotlk that was from Dubai(Guy that I played arena with) and there were several people from Kuwait in the guild I was in, in wotlk.
Probably more countries that haven’t been mentioned that have the European servers as the closest servers and as such they play here.
That might be the case, but just for reference, before I started using forums 6-7 years ago my English was incredibly bad (sidepoint: ye, they can learn to improve it here). Back then I was 15. Before that time, my english skills was somewhere between “I understand a few words” and “what the is this gibberish?”.
Not everyone learns the same speed the same way. Something most people forget these days.
That is unfortunately true. Personally I still think that it is a bit over-dramatic to make so much drama around like 6-7 comments in a different language, out of 192 comments atm in this post.
And that is totally fine. But some people are less friendly in comparison to you when they ask about the context of different-language-talk. One example I know from the past was when one of my former friends (not anymore my friend) was pretty unfriendly when I and a friend talked in our native while being in VoIP chat with him. He basically said something along the lines of “Ey man, how about you speak english like a normal person” but in pretty annoyed voice tone. Needless to say that some more incidents with that person resulted in me not talking to him anymore.
I would assume because they feel like it is not the effort worth to type an entire post, translate it with tools online (and additionally translating every comment and response they read/give). For some that is simply a big turn-off. (Gladly not for us here, just mentioning it)
As I mentioned in response to Drobdien, not everyone speaks english on the same level or learns that fast as others. In my country maybe 50% of the population can speak english and surely those are mostly people of my age. But it is also not everyone. Even 25% not being able to speak english online is a huge handicap.
And that is normal. But as I said, personally I see no reason to report someone for using a different language, as long as that person is not spamming, trolling or harassing others with it.
If 6 comments in a 200 comment thread were racist, would it be too much drama to remove them? If 6 comments in a 200 comment thread were offensive and abusive, would it be too much drama to remove them?
Rules are rules, and just like racism or abusive behavior are against them, so is not using English on English forums. If you break the rules, you break them, and it doesn’t matter if you only broke them a little or a lot.
How do you know they’re not? You shouldn’t need a third party tool to check, if the comment on the forums is offensive, trolling, harassing, or breaking other rules. That’s why the only English rule exists. For this very reason.
Of course, you completely missed the entire point of his comment. The point wasn’t that he was insulted, the point was that people can bypass the language filters and hide things that are against the ToS behind different languages, even if they’re clearly capable of conversing in English, which is a problem.
You try to sound all educated and smart, yet you still have a lot of problems simply understanding what’s written.
That’s the neat thing. I don’t. If they use a different language I am not necessarily going to ask what they said or check it with translating it. To me, that is optional, since I was not part of the original conversation between them and the “victim”. If I would be part of that conversation in the first place, I would do it tho.
In fact, if people like you didn’t complain about them using an other language here, I would just have ignored this post altogether.
I really wish they would actually take this stuff seriously in the game.
I’ve encountered so many inappropriate names in Swedish in the game but it seems they’re doing nothing about them, have reported all of them. Some were blatantly racist, ableist or homophobic but they still run around with those names.
is this gibberish?”.