Classification reorganization of Non-English forums

Said Kaljanac a.k.a. SARAJ wrote:
In order to avoid linguistical conceptual conflicts between some communities on the one hand and provide educational tool and purely linguistical classification on the other, would it be possible to reorganize Non English forums per family instead of per language.

Samuel Murray wrote:



I have no objection, but what you're proposing is a large redesign aimed at helping to avoid a few people taking offence because they're overly sensitive. Whether you'll succeed in avoiding such feelings, is an open question. Forgive me if my answer is insensitive.

The current system is pretty straight-forward and few visitors will misunderstand what language is meant by what name. Those few who click "Macedonian" because they are from the Greek province of Macedonia, will very quickly realise their mistake when they start to read the forum, and then they'll look for the "Greek" forum.

I have visited some of the less busy forums and I notice that some of them have their titles in English even though the forum posts are not in English. Well, how about making it a little more clear from the outset what the language of the forum is, by putting a small welcome message at the top of each's forum's thread list... and make that welcome message in the language concerned. The Greek Macedonian user will click "Macedonian", but on the very next screen he'll see a welcome message in Macedonian (not Greek), and he won't be confused anymore.

My2c

Özden Arıkan wrote:

Even though you did your best to start with the most conveniently narrowed-down classification, did you not? Why not use the larger language family name, then, the Indo-European, I mean? Because Macedonian and Greek would be under the same category in that case?

First, "language categorization" is not the word of God. Many are controversial, including Altaic, hence the classification of Turkish. Mind you, it happens to be the language I've heard since the day I was born and I don't need it be classified here by non-speakers, thank you.

And the excuse of "educative purpose" sounds even lovelier in a site supposed to be for language professionals and needs so much for educative efforts in translators ethics, rates, false credentials, training, ego battles in the field of terminological help... you name it.

Second, there seems to be no real linguistic issue here, and the issue is purely political, as has been admitted in the related forum discussion. It is sad and infuriating to see that a redesign, which is in no way needed from a design perspective could be suggested here for purely political reasons. And I thought politics was outside the scope of our site. We have stayed clear -and stringently at that- of anything even remotely suggestive of politics so far, and now we are surrendering to a nationalist dispute?

And, by the way, who says that Cantonese and Mandarin will have the same debate? Why try to justify the suggestion for such an awkward reorganization with assumptions and prophesy?

Said Kaljanac a.k.a. SARAJ wrote:
This kind of classification in the long term could open the doors to add as many languages as requested by each language community...

Özden Arıkan wrote:
I am disturbed that Proz would redesign the organization of its forums because of a political dispute.

Samuel Murray wrote:


Sorry, I had to run, but I wanted to comment on another part of the original post.



Why would any language community want to have more than one forum for its language? Unless... unless your definition of "language community" has very little to do with language. If language communities are defined by language (not politics), then surely every language community will have only one language, right?

Samuel Murray wrote:



In a multinational, multilingual community like ProZ.com, sooner or later geopolitical issues will become problems. Suggestions offered for such problems can be simple or complicated. Suggestions can make everyone happy (or at least no-one unhappy), or it can make only some happy.

One cannot turn a blind eye to the plural nature of ProZ.com, and whenever a problem arises, one should seek solutions. You are concerned that dealing with the issue may create a dangerour precedent, but I think ignoring a problem creates a potentially more devastating precendent.

Said's solution is that the entry page for the non-English forums be redesigned slightly.

The proposed solution is simple, it is unobtrusive, it does not require massive changes (only the layout and content of a single page), and it does not in turn create any other problems.

I stand by my previous comments, though.