The return of international sub-forums?

[DJ Omnimaga]

I was wondering if in the future we get a few more french forum users and maybe a few more dutch ones, if it would be nice to ressurect the old dutch and french boards we had on the old forums for a while in 2007? Back then, it didn't work too well due to the lack of active forum users, but now, we have 4 active people who speak french (me, AaroneusTheGreat, juju1234 and Silver Shadow) and maybe in the future we may get more. Also, I think we got a few dutch members as well and maybe there are others who might join, since there are a lot of dutch users in the TI community. For now I would wait of course, but if we get more of those people, maybe it could be useful, for example, if people need some calc help or want to share their stuff in multiple langages or native language? Keep in mind that only french and dutch would be included since we don't have enough german/portuguese/spanish users. Each sections would have a calc discussion/showcase subforum and a off-topic one.

EDIT: as mentionned later in a post below (by me), it also feels a bit strange that Omnimaga is almost entirely in english even though in its first entire two years of existence, everything Omnimaga-related was in french. Even the site was originally gonna start in french

[mapar007]

Eh, moi aussi je parle le français, mais ce n'est pas ma langue maternelle. Une partie de ma famille est francophone.

As for us Dutch users, we already have two calculator fora (but one of them (scholieren.be) has started to become a noobz 'n trollz place), the other one, www.ti-wereld.nl, is still OK, though. Ressurecting the French subfora is definitely a good idea, and maybe Dutch is worth a try.

Nederlands verovert de wereld! (Dutch exam today, btw. The only one I might flunk, but I don't really care. I hate that class...)


PS: Got word from the math teacher that everyone passed the [math] exam.

[Galandros]

The idea of giving calculator help and support in the native language seems attractive. Omnimaga was really complete back then.

Even there aren't enough users for a full sub-forum it could exist an international one where any language is permitted and you indicate the language by an English tag indicating the language. For example, for a German topic the title has to start with "[German]". The only problem is we can't assure support to every language so better make a sticky that tells if there is a regular user than can help in some language.


It would be fun to me start learning French. Do you know any good website for that? I will use google translate for a while but I will really need a good website/ebook to learn French.
EDIT:
I could definitely be the "responsible" for Portuguese topics. I could try to write Spanish, although I warn it may sometimes decay to "Portuguesish" (Portuguese+Spanish). I know basic German but is very very rusty.

I learned one thing of Dutch, I think, "wereld" is today. xD

[mapar007]

Don't they teach French at school in Portugal? I thought they did in most European countries. In Flanders, we have compulsory French classes as soon as we reach class 5 (that's 10 à 11y). In Brussels, the capital city, and its surroundings, French is obligatory from class 3 onwards iirc. But then again, French is one of our 3 national languages, so... (Flanders: people speak Dutch, Wallonia: people speak French, 'East-Cantons'*: people speak German. Brussels used to be neerlandophonic, but most people speak French now, and all administration is bilingual.)


* Actually a part of Wallonia. this region was annexed after WWI, it used to belong to Germany, so that's why most people speak German. When we were there two years ago on our scouting camp, we 'discovered' that the majority of [older] people didn't speak a word of French... (at least not where we were)

@Galandros: nope. Guessed wrongly. Wereld==world. Vandaag==today.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Mhmm, I think a 3rd international section where all languages are allowed with restrictions would be nice too. What I thought is the following rules:

1) Topic would have to start with [language]
2) Language would need to be avaliable for translating in google language tools
3) Use alphabets (so moderators who don't have japaneese/chineese/korean charsets installed can still moderate these posts)

I would also most likely need to translate the board rules in french/dutch for the two bigger sub forums. However, a dutch user would need to translate the dutch version for me.

@Mapar I wish you good luck with the exam stuff ^^

As for french/dutch forums, there are two z80 forums for each, but one of the french one is inactive and the other one now sometimes have people being rude to new users when they don't understand fast enough about calc stuff. It used to be better on that sense but it seems to have changed in the past few months, which is sad considering it's mostly a help forum. For the other dutch one, TI-Wereld, it seemed ok, except I noticed an user was getting harrassed from time to time there and one of the user I will not name has a strong bias against BASIC projects, meaning he sometimes troll BASIC threads with how ASM is much better and the like. In a french Omnimaga subforum this wouldn't happen, same for dutch.

Another thing I just remembered now: Omnimaga used to be a french-only thing. All my calc games used to all be in french and the site was originally gonna start in french, until I noticed nobody cared about RPGs in the french TI community. It feels a bit weird that Omnimaga is pretty much only english now when it was entirely french for its first two entire years. From the creation of Omnimaga on September 1st 2001 until November 2003, everything Omnimaga-related was just in french

[mapar007]

I volunteer for the translation of the rules.
@DJ: I think I know who you are talking about    But yeah, there's only one real project up at ti-wereld atm. Most stuff we do is helping out students.

EDIT: it's done, I created a separate topic to discuss the translation and scan it for potential unclarities and such.

[Juju]

Bonne idée DJ

I like the idea to internationalize the forums, since not everyone is not native English... I can volunteer too

[Galandros]

I had option between French and German.

But yes, French has influence through Europe education even after falling behind English.

[Juju]

Of course, if you speak a foreign language, you automatically get a wider audience if your website is in English.

[DJ Omnimaga]

For some reasons, I noticed that people from France often don't speak a single word of english, though. I am not sure why but I guessed it was probably because unlike Canada for us, France's only official language is french so english is not as important to learn. In Quebec, we learn both french and english by grade 4, altough for english it always remains a second language.

[ztrumpet]

I think it's a good idea.  (I just doubt if I'd post in that forum.)  It could help with all the non-English native speakers.

DJ, speaking of those games, when will we get Illusiat 2004 in English?  I can't wait to play Illusiat 4!

[DJ Omnimaga]

that reminds me, I should really finish that one one day...

My TI-Nspire is pretty much free, now. I decided against using Axe Parser on it, because a TI-Nspire is not a good tool to gauge ASM program speed. I prefer testing my game speed on the regular 83+ now so it's more accurate for when I release something. My Nspire now serves as bridge to transfer files to my 83+, because my new PC has no serial port. Basically I send Axe updates/files to my Nspire, then send them to my 83+ from there. This means my Nspire is free for BASIC dev now, meaning maybe I could work some more on Illusiat 2004 (despite the OS 2.54MP display bugs with inverted text... I'm just editing french text anyway...)

[Silver Shadow]

The only problem with this is that some promising projects may appear in a language we don't speak, and we won't notice them straight away.

[DJ Omnimaga]

yeah that was my only issue with these subforums really. I was worried french/dutch/germans would just announce them in language forums and not bother doing some small updates every now and then in the english projects section. I guess what I will do if we add such subforums is add a pinned topic encouraging foreign language members to also showcase their projects in the english section, even if it's summed up in one or two sentences (instead of describing the projects like crazy, just say "Quest is a 83 RPG in BASIC that will feature many hours of gameplay and good graphics. Here are screenshots!" then post updates as images.

[Zera]

I'm not sure if it would really be necessary. It seems like the French-speaking audience would mostly hail from Canada, and likely speak English as well. All in all, it seems like it would just be segregating the forum with an exclusive section that English-speaking members can't understand or participate in.

I'm not really sure what the demographics are, though. I could be mistaken. In fact, I'm not really sure what the French / English situation is in Canada. Do sections of the population only speak French, or is it more of a bilingual thing?