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Multilingual caches


johnrm

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I am based in Ireland and have joined the Irish Geocaching Forum which is accessible from the main Irish Geocaching website...

http://www.geocachingireland.com/

 

I noticed a post in the past few days where a fellow geocacher (English speaking) was travelling to Germany and was looking for someone to translate cache details from German to English. As geocaching is a global activity, is it worth considering having a 'translate' function, where another version of the cache text is displayed? Is does not have to be 'Babel fished' but just a text popup.

 

In the above case, someone on the site offered to do the translation, which was handy, but if the translator did it once and submitted it to the cache owner, this could be included on the cache page, possibly by way of an additional button.

 

A simple way of implementing this might be to store a .txt file in the gallery. When the cache page loads, *.txt, If these files exist, then show a 'translation' icon on the cache page, click on the button and filter *.txt instead of *.jpg

 

Something to consider.

John

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I am based in Denmark, and for all new cache listings published in Danish only, our national reviewer Lewa Nuva routinely posts a note stating: "Hi - Thanks for your new cache. Please add an English translation to the cache, so that the many foreign cachers can also enjoy your cache". The large majority of Danish caches now have at least a summary in English, in addition to the Danish text.

 

What we would dearly like to see, is a similar initiative from our friends in Germany, and most particularly, the Netherlands. I would suggest that Groundspeak should ask all the volunteer reviewers in the non-English speaking countries to kindly follow the above example. English translations are mostly required for hints and multicaches.

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What we would dearly like to see, is a similar initiative from our friends in Germany, and most particularly, the Netherlands. I would suggest that Groundspeak should ask all the volunteer reviewers in the non-English speaking countries to kindly follow the above example. English translations are mostly required for hints and multicaches.

 

There are few things worst than trying to find a cache with a machine-translated version of the page which you made yourself... but one of them, is using what you think is a human-written translation, only to find out that it's from Babelfish etc.

 

Here in France we have many caches which have been "helpfully" translated into English by the owner - using a computer - but where the translation is worse than none at all. At least if there's no translation, you might go and look up the words in a dictionary.

 

For example, lots of French cache listings talk about the box ("boite"). However, it turns out that "boite" is the 3rd person present indicative form of the verb "boiter", meaning to [walk with a] limp. So the translation will say "you will find the limps at...". :lol: And there are plenty of far worse examples. It's not hard to come up with ones which could be positively misleading or dangerous.

 

So, the cache owner should probably spend the most time and effort making the listing as correct as possible in their own language. If they are also reasonable competent in English, great. If not, leave it as it is, or maybe post a helpful link - you can easily create a URL which will translate the current page at Babelfish, Google, etc. It also helps the translation if the listing is relatively free of slang and jokes - although, of course, that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

 

Now, the above applies more to countries which have a lower level of English competence among the caching population, and/or whose languages are more readily available online. For countries with less widely-spoken/translated languages and/or better English skills (the two often go together), one could make a better case for asking people to add an English translation.

 

Bottom line: there's no really easy solution. But for Traditional caches, in theory all you needs is your GPSr anyway. And "Spoiler" seems to be international. B)

Edited by riviouveur
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But for Traditional caches, in theory all you needs is your GPSr anyway. And "Spoiler" seems to be international. :wub:

 

When I go paperless with my GPSr all I have loaded on it are the coordinates, the cache name, the type of cache, the size of the container, and the difficulty and terrain ratings. I find about 50% of the traditional caches that I search for that way. Not as good as when I have read the description and hints, but still good enough for me to do it that way a lot. Except for the cache name, all the rest of the info is independent of the language of the cache.

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