Non-English Postings

[raghukamath]

Yes what we individually and @akitu can do may be is to form a link between this site and the local community. Occasional highlight the problems and concerns that local community has and try to convey it to broader krita users and developers here.

[Eranthis_stellata]

@Lesqwe56

As a official forum, the posts here should let most people understand, communicate, and easily find answer from anyone, in my opinion.
There are some local krita community, but the userbase is not huge enough to let every place very active, unfortunately.

Speaking of Clip Studio Paint, I remember there’s auto machine translation in their forum. Every time I visit will see it translate English to broken Chinese - harder to read than non-native language

If krita-artists.org provides the translation function, it will cost a lot.
This is not acceptable.

I think users can use free web translation and online translation on their own.
Microsoft’s edga browser provides free web translation.
Google Chrome also offers free web translations.

However, the web translation quality is a bit poor.
Copying the content manually and pasting it into google/deepl/other online translators works better.

So a user with poor English like me uses the browser web translation to view the entire web page.
The parts that need to be read carefully are manually copied and pasted into the online translator for translation.

[Eranthis_stellata]

@raghukamath

Yes what we individually and @akitu can do may be is to form a link between this site and the local community. Occasional highlight the problems and concerns that local community has and try to convey it to broader krita users and developers here.

In the local community I have always emphasized the importance of feedback to Libre Software.
Users are recommended to register at krita-artists.org and bugs.kde.org to provide feedback.
Or communicate internationally at krita-artists.org.

I’m also helping local community users to relay feedback.

Also, maybe there should be forum posts about various local communities so that users can join their native-speaking communities?

[akitu]

While I was away from the table, the discussion proceeded.
I will read it bit by bit.

It is interesting that the CLIP STUDIO forum has a translation function, as an attempt to lower the hurdle for use.
However, as you said above, forums are made up of people helping each other.
We, the users, have to be respectful and cooperative. I don’t want to suggest the hard way.

As an example of my language, there were people who tried to promote krita when it was less functional than it is now, but they did not last long. I think its absence has continued until now.
I would like to agree with you about the endorsement of forming a local community, but I am concerned about the limitations of what informal individuals can do.

[akitu]

Is the only way for users to manually change their language settings the browser language settings? (krita.org can be changed from the header, right?)

[raghukamath]

You can change language in the preferences if it is not automatically set for you.
There is a dropdown which shows available language

[akitu]

I was not familiar with the account settings. Thanks for answering my rudimentary question.

[EyeOdin]

A Portuguese speaking krita community would be crazy for sure and die soon enough and I would probably not be there lol. I rather do the English route for sure.

[gregors]

Hi there!

The first obstacle to manage in order to post here is language – and there are a lot of creative people around that don’t speak English well enough.

Wouldn’t it make sense to open a new category for those? I’ve seen that at forum.arduino.cc and the section for people from Germany is quite active.

So, what do you think?

[Katamaheen]

You mean something like creating a category for each language?

I don’t know… it feels like the one community will split into multiple little communities staying together without mixing with others.

If English is too complicated, there’s always translation websites, like deepL.

[gregors]

@Katamaheen

You mean something like creating a category for each language?

How about the most popular ones? I think the language hitch excludes many creative people.

If English is too complicated, there’s always translation websites, like deepL.

So, one has an obstacle to replace an obstacle?

[sooz]

Hi @gregors

You might be interested in the posts in this thread:

Non-English Postings

I am trying for the first time to ask a question with automatic translation only KRITA-ARTISTS.ORG recommends the use of English. Speaking in your native language is not forbidden, but you will be asked to correct yourself. Therefore, it is anachronistically difficult to get information about KRITA in any other language than English! The point is that translation is not a panacea! The topic of tag on language has been raised in this place before, but it did not lead to a lively discussion. …

(Also, I moved your post into a more appropriate category)

[gregors]

@sooz

You might be interested in the posts in this thread:

Thank you. I know there are many implications to my “feature request”. But I see language as a part of ergonomics. And as Krita should be useful for everyone, I think this forum should be useful for more people than it is now.

[sooz]

@Katamaheen

it feels like the one community will split into multiple little communities

I would miss all my international friends.

[Katamaheen]

@gregors

So, one has an obstacle to replace an obstacle?

How is that an obstacle?

Also, the forum will have to look for other moderators for each popular language.

And let’s not forget that categories (and sub-categories) are for specific stuff, like support and advice, artwork, etc… if the forum adds a language, how would it go?

I’m French. If I didn’t speak English, I’d go to the French category, but I’d still need support and advice if I need help. So I’d post my question in the French category, right? There will probably be someone that already asked the same question in all other languages, but that won’t help me, 'cause I can’t understand.

I could post my artwork no problem, there will be a lot of sub-categories to choose from. There will be multiple “finished artwork”, multiple “WIPs”, etc… because each language still needs its specific place to post, to keep the forum nice and tidy!

Then there’s the develop category and the resources category. Same problem as the support and advice; I’ll only go to my own language, and maybe there’ll be duplicates everywhere.

We’ll need the help of all these new moderators to keep everything clean, as newcomers sometimes don’t know where to put their topics. So if you add language categories to that… pure chaos.

I might be very pessimistic, but these are the problematic parts I see with you idea.

[Katamaheen]

That’s the fun part with internet, unexpected friendship with people from the other side of the globe

[Takiro]

You mean a national section because the current forum is the international one.
As already mentioned we would have to have moderators for every language and duplicate basically every category except maybe the most general ones like the artwork section. Things like issues and bugs perhaps even have to be duplicated to the international English speaking one because there’s simply no one able to help in that language or it’s something everyone needs to be aware of the other way too. This is simply too much work for the current krita-artists community to handle right now, I believe.

[Michelist]

I’ve seen two small forums, like KA, that did this and then died from the fragmentation @Katamaheen mentioned, and there will be more examples of that I don’t know of. In these two forums, it was because users of the one or two dominant languages demanded too much for themselves, according to the motto “we are the majority here”, which led to conflicts and flame wars and after a short time to the loss of the supporting part of the community, because they were fed up with being crushed between the fronts, and this loss of regular users and moderators/administrators led to the collapse of the forums within 6–12 months. That was 20 years ago and there were hardly any usable translation tools at the time, so this split even seemed to make a lot of sense, but I don’t see anything good in it.

The other case, which also exists, are national forums that have opened an additional section in English or Spanish for international users, these subforums just bob along without really finding users who use them, as the interesting topics are discussed in the national section and users from outside prefer to search for and post information and support via Translator in the national topics that are of interest to them.

And here on KA there seem to be a lot of users from Asia and the countries of the former Warsaw Pact area (and certainly also from other areas of the world) who only or mainly use the support of translation software in the forum, and some of them are very active. I myself also regularly use dictionaries and occasionally full text translators to translate my posts pre-written in German, the latter mostly when I’m sick or very tired or when I have to do it quickly because I’m in a hurry, but I almost always check and improve the translation.
I believe, and could be wrong, that the issue is rather a prevailing aversion to anything foreign among some nationalities and the desire of their citizens to keep to themselves. This may be justified for these users in their national environment, for example when they are fighting not to be assimilated by an overpowering neighbor, or for national minorities who do not enjoy the protection of their language and culture everywhere, for example the minority of Sorbs in Germany is protected by law and is supported, not all minorities in the world enjoy such protection. But in an international forum like KA it is an unnecessary and inapplicable fear.

Personally, I think it’s good to have a language that everyone can understand and communicate in. And I think that English in particular, which is so easy to learn, is ideal. German, French, Chinese or Russian would be a much bigger barrier.
History impressively shows us the suffering that not understanding each other has brought to our world. How many wars have been waged because of misunderstandings, because of the inability and unwillingness to talk to each other and exchange ideas, to move/stay in the same (language) space.
In my opinion, we artists in particular should try to get along with each other and be an example to others. With our wonderful hobby (profession), which is perhaps more suitable than any other hobby for bringing people together and talking about something together instead of arguing and bashing each other’s heads in, although of course there are always controversial works (which I would like to distinguish from the works of pretended “artists” who deliberately sow hatred and want to divide in a negative sense).
But mostly works of art, art in itself, is unifying, i.e. paintings, music, sculptures, plays, books, whatever, nothing that people argue about, a controversy is not an argument in the negative sense, but something they enjoy together, like the music they dance to, the play, painting, book they discuss.
I like our forum the way it is.

Michelist