Posting Kudoz questions, e.g. English > Spanish, but asking in French. Why? Thread poster: ahartje
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ahartje
Portugal
Local time: 18:55
Member (2006)
German to Portuguese
+ ...
Out of curiosity I´d like to hear some ideas, why a translator is posting a question from English > Spanish in Kudoz, but asking e.g. in French? I do not understand the reason, why somebody supposedly native in at least one of the respective idioms is using a third language to ask the question?
No, I am not worried about points, ranking, etc., I just don´t get it. Normally I find such cases in the German>Portuguese pair, where the asker (native Portuguese) is using English to explain (?... See more Out of curiosity I´d like to hear some ideas, why a translator is posting a question from English > Spanish in Kudoz, but asking e.g. in French? I do not understand the reason, why somebody supposedly native in at least one of the respective idioms is using a third language to ask the question?
No, I am not worried about points, ranking, etc., I just don´t get it. Normally I find such cases in the German>Portuguese pair, where the asker (native Portuguese) is using English to explain (?) the problem.
Any ideas? ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Probably they are mistakes | Dec 22, 2022 |
Last week an Indian translator posed the question "¿Cómo puedo ser traductor jurado?" (How can I become a certified/sworn translator?) from Spanish to English. He does not work with Spanish and this was his first question according to his profile.
2 translations/answers were proposed, but I wrote in the comments sections that this was probably meant for the forum section. The question was deleted soon afterwards. It was clearly a mistake.
[Editado a las 2022-12-22 21:19 GMT]
| | | | ahartje
Portugal
Local time: 18:55
Member (2006)
German to Portuguese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | No newbies, no mistakes | Dec 23, 2022 |
The cases I´ve seen are/were placed in the correct section (Kudoz) and do not refer to sudden "non translated", let´s say German expressions in a Spanish text. The plain text is in German, the experienced translator works from German into PTPT, but asks questions in English.
IMHO s/he reduzes the chance to get an adequate answer by using English for explanation, because less colleagues are working with all 3 idioms involved than asking just in one language of the respective language pair... See more The cases I´ve seen are/were placed in the correct section (Kudoz) and do not refer to sudden "non translated", let´s say German expressions in a Spanish text. The plain text is in German, the experienced translator works from German into PTPT, but asks questions in English.
IMHO s/he reduzes the chance to get an adequate answer by using English for explanation, because less colleagues are working with all 3 idioms involved than asking just in one language of the respective language pair shown in Kudoz. ▲ Collapse
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Why is somebody 'supposedly native in at least one of the respective idioms' (by 'idioms' I guess you meant 'languages')? I do a lot of work from and into English for languages other than my native tongue, which is not Englishs. I haven't had any quality issues (that I know of) for any of the work I've done so far. I have never understood this perfectionist/elitist 'one language' approach advocated by many translators. Any language pair is good as long as you provide the result and stand by it, ... See more Why is somebody 'supposedly native in at least one of the respective idioms' (by 'idioms' I guess you meant 'languages')? I do a lot of work from and into English for languages other than my native tongue, which is not Englishs. I haven't had any quality issues (that I know of) for any of the work I've done so far. I have never understood this perfectionist/elitist 'one language' approach advocated by many translators. Any language pair is good as long as you provide the result and stand by it, being it 'native' or not. Also, from my experience, though it's not directly relevant to the question, there's much more resources available to learn from for e.g. English> ▲ Collapse
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ahartje
Portugal
Local time: 18:55
Member (2006)
German to Portuguese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Perfectionism/one language only?? | Dec 23, 2022 |
I am not talking about perfectionism or one language only, because by asking a question in Kudoz there are mainly 2 languages involved: the source and the target language. I see you are translating from and into many languages, so if you have a question from Danish to Russian you would asked it in English?
Seems illogical to me...
| | | | | Yes I would (though I never ask Kudoz questions, only answer some) | Dec 23, 2022 |
Because 1. I would be able to express myself better in English and 2. There would be many more translators in EN>DA than in RU>DA, so I would address a greater audience. I would ask for an English equivalent of something and work with that into my native language. I actually often have to use EN as a 'support language' because there's much more resources/texts from Scandinavian languages into EN than into RU. It's just seems so logical from my perspective.
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 19:55
Spanish to English
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| French as a lingua franca | Dec 23, 2022 |
Many people/s in the world speak English as their first language. On the other hand, almost half a billion people are using English as their second language. It is considered to be the world's lingua franca nowadays, as English is widely used as the major language in many countries worldwide.
French was a prestige lingua franca for centuries and this may be why some posters might choose it, to appeal to a wider audience, the same as other do in English.
| | | | Daniel Frisano 
Italy
Local time: 19:55
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
Because we're supposed to know languages.
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expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 18:55
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Daniel Frisano wrote:
Because we're supposed to know languages.
I know a little bit of Urdu, Arabic, Greek... What do you think if I post a question, for example, in Urdu when I need a term from French into European Portuguese?
I think the OP wants to stress this.
I'm sorry, but "we're supposed to know languages" doesn't mean that we know all the languages.
It occurred to me that this person might be from Andorra and asked that question in French (?)
The official language of the country is Catalan, although Spanish, Portuguese and French are also commonly spoken.
Who knows...?
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Why not ask the person directly?
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I don’t get it either, maybe because I’m one of those ‘perfectionist/elitist‘ translators who works exclusively into his/hers native language, so if and when I post a question I’m only interested in getting the help of my fellow Portuguese translators…
| | | | | Asking a Q from language A to B | Dec 26, 2022 |
is normal and will most likely attract answers from people who feel competent in both.
Asking the Q in 3rd language C (i.e. expecting potential answerers to master C too) will drastically reduce the number of potential answerers. But it's perfectly legit. Just not terribly wise, IMHO.
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ahartje
Portugal
Local time: 18:55
Member (2006)
German to Portuguese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for all your ideas, but my troubles still exist to understand this kind of explanation in a third language.
The only motive I can see to ask a question in English, which is announced as from Portuguese into German, is that the asker isn´t proficient enough in both languages, in this case Portuguese and German.
I know it is legit and certainly nothing to get an headache about, it´s just curiosity...
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