Caching in foreign countries

[+twistyipper]

Anyone have the solution for foreign languages while caching from paperless unit?

[+OZ2CPU]

it is nice to go and visit a cool new place, go geocaching,

to find out most caches are made using local not english hints or importent info.

There is NO gsak macro that can translate all cache text into english,

and even if there was, it will not work,

some write hints backwards, or with spaces or with funny chars or spelled wrong on purpose !!

 

a trick : stop locals and ask what the hint means,

until caches are placed using ENGLISH !!

 

or select ONLY caches with the turist attribute set ?!?!

 

you can also like I do, try to encurage ALL nice and friendly CO to at least add a one liner in ENGLISH

or a hint in case it is important to make the cache findable.

 

I must say I tried to travel a bit, and often it drives us mad,

simple easy stuff gets impossible to find, only due to we dont get the hint.

I am no English expert, not at all.. I dont expect others to be either..

I just want them to at least try a little bit, you know they CAN create cache pages,

and use a PC and the internet.

all this is 100% english. so why not just the hint, thanks..

 

it is important to understand, we are turists, we can not be online, it cost 100$ a day to geocache via online cellphone,

no way we can be online, and there is no way we can read and translate and plan from home all the caches we want to find,

you often newer know where you go and play while you are out.

 

you are from Ontario, Canada, right ?

so a perfect solution is, you ONLY visit English or French speaking locations :-)

since you handle French too, right ?

Edited January 15, 2013 by OZ2CPU

[+CanadianRockies]

Anyone have the solution for foreign languages while caching from paperless unit?

Plan ahead. Translate the listing pages before you leave, copy the essential portions to a single document, print that document, and take it with you.

[+Oxford Stone]

Can I pick up on the roaming fee rather than the linguistic element of this? I'm quite new to GC (end Oct) and it was my reason for getting my 1st smartphone. I'm off to Vegas for a conference next month (I live in England) and will go to Italy on holiday later this year. So the thing to do is store a max of caches on (in my case - android phone) c:geo, right? And use free wifi in Vegas hotel / Italian cafés where possible? Is that the strategy - and make sure not to hit Live Map when out and about?

On the language side - though I speak French, Spanish and Portuguese I too will be a bit stuck on some of the hints from what I've seen - but I see it is an opportunity to learn some Italian.

Here's an all-Italian one from the deep south of Italy:

La Grotta di Sant'Angelo, o Santuario rupestre di San Michele arcangelo, è un interessante ambiente (OK - interesting ambience / atmosphere, St Angelo's grotto...) rupestre, secondo la tradizione basiliana diffusa in Calabria a partire dal V secolo d.C.

 

gercate vicino i muri. (near the walls? but what's gercate?)

Additional Hints (Encrypt)

 

Cerca una tegola rotta ma non sul tetto (near a - erm... broken but not on the... erm... I'm getting broken tile but not on the roof, but google and freetranslate not helping with gercate... aha, my Italian colleague tells me it's a typo should be cercate, look for!!! Yup it's tough isn't it!)

 

Actually looking at the Bologna ones, I'm in luck, mostly translated! But if I visited my mate in deepest Finland...

Which parts of the world are you finding a lot of caches with no English?

[+Meandering WA]

when I cached in Madeira ( Portugal ) i downloaded only caches that had English translations.

 

I also carried a notepad that had the cache and key info , such as the hint>

 

I also select caches that are of easier rating since I was in strange and sometimes hazardous terrain in very remote setting.

[+MartyBartfast]

Go for easier difficulty hides, less likely to need the hint.

 

If you have a smartphone there's usually a translation app for it, although as OZ2CPU says people often don't use 'real' words so you have to be prepared for this to not be %100 accurate.

 

Why not organise an event early on in your visit, then you'll be able to meet some local cachers and get their advice!

[+Team Beard]

Any way you look at it, there's going to be extra work involved. When there's a cache that you are interested in pursuing: visit the cache page on geocaching.com, use Google Translate to translate the description and hint into your native language, then copy the description and hint into the Personal Cache Note field. This method will only work if you use a device that can access your personal cache notes from geocaching.com. I use Cachesense on my Android phone and can do this without a problem. Some GPS units may be able to sync personal notes, but I'm not too familiar with all of the different units out there. I hope this helps.

[+geodarts]

Anyone have the solution for foreign languages while caching from paperless unit?

Plan ahead. Translate the listing pages before you leave, copy the essential portions to a single document, print that document, and take it with you.

 

I have used GSAK to add the translation to the cache description / hint so that it is all on the handheld.

[+hzoi]

We have about 1900 finds in foreign countries. Most of them were not in English, or had minimal English desriptions. Advance preparation is the key.

 

First thing is to weed out the caches that are going to require advanced language skills. Puzzle caches and multis are not going to be easy, but they are doable. Most earthcaches should have an English description, though often you'll find that it's an automatic translation that doesn't handle science as well as it could. So screen what you're looking for and try to keep it simple so you can enjoy your trip and not spend it quietly swearing at your GPSr.

 

Before I had a paperless unit, I would go through the caches, translate the description, and then make one master sheet that cut down the information on the cache to one or two lines, and then take that into the field. After a while, this got easier and easier afer I learned enough German to get through a cache description.

 

Since we went paperless, it's become more of a copy and paste operation. Download a pocket query of the caches we want to find and open it in GSAK. For each cache, copy the description, paste that into an online translator. Then copy the translation, edit that cache's description in GSAK, and paste in the translated version. For those caches that have dual descriptions, I would normally do a tranlation of the foreign language bit to make sure it was accurate, and for earthcaches, I would always trim out the foreign language section to make sure the English description wouldn't get cut off by our Oregon, which has limited memory.

 

It would be fantastic if someone came up with a way to integrate translation software into a GSAK micro, but I've yet to see one.

 

edit to add: So apparently I've taken both the approaches suggested by CanadianRockies and geodarts. Personally, I enjoyed the paperless route, that is, having more of the cache description with me. That way I knew more about why the cache was placed there, not just where the container was hidden. But your mileage may vary.

Edited January 15, 2013 by hzoi

[+FunnyNose]

I use an unlocked Android phone. I take out my US sim card whilst flying over. As soon as I get to my destination I buy a sim card from a local cell provider. Usually you can get 500MB of data for around $20US. Then if I need a translation I can do on the spot.

[+Oxford Stone]

Thanks funnynose, might consider that!

(I ought to fess up at this stage to working for SDL - company behind www.freetranslation.com and various other clever bits of linguistic / customer experience technology, eg people who bought this also bought that as seen in online shops)

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Thanks funnynose, might consider that!

(I ought to fess up at this stage to working for SDL - company behind www.freetranslation.com and various other clever bits of linguistic / customer experience technology, eg people who bought this also bought that as seen in online shops)

 

While I don't have anywhere close to the number of finds in other countries as hzoi I've cached in 17 different countries and agree with others that a bit of pre-planning helps a lot. When I'm traveling I typically just pick out a handful of caches to find, and do any pre-translation as necessary before leaving home, and don't try to find a *lot* of geocaches (usually because I'm traveling on business and just don't have that much free time).

 

Although you have a access to a web based translation site there are also numerous smart phone apps that will do translation, and and if you can find one that doesn't depend on a live data connection it would likely be used for translations while in the field.

[+OZ2CPU]

Hints are also used VERY different from what you are used too..

Dont always expect the hint to tell you anything at all about where to look for the cache,

or the size or type or color of the cache,

it can be a very cryptic message about where NOT to look,

 

Also I seen a few tricks :

Here is a Text, see how easy it is to read.

Hereisatextseehoweasyitistoread.

Her eis ate xtse ehowe asyiti stor ead.

He res aTex tseeh owea syit is tore ad.

Her£ i$ a 7ext, s33 h0w e@sy i7 i$ t0 re6d.

 

Now.. imagine this is done in French,

and the text say: look under the only square stone just 15meters away

now a D1T1 is impossible to find..

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Hints are also used VERY different from what you are used too..

Dont always expect the hint to tell you anything at all about where to look for the cache,

or the size or type or color of the cache,

it can be a very cryptic message about where NOT to look,

 

Also I seen a few tricks :

Here is a Text, see how easy it is to read.

Hereisatextseehoweasyitistoread.

Her eis ate xtse ehowe asyiti stor ead.

He res aTex tseeh owea syit is tore ad.

Her£ i$ a 7ext, s33 h0w e@sy i7 i$ t0 re6d.

 

Now.. imagine this is done in French,

and the text say: look under the only square stone just 15meters away

now a D1T1 is impossible to find..

 

On the other hand, when I looked over quite a few cache listings for caches in Paris many of them included picture spoilers with arrows pointing to the exact location where the cache was hidden.

[cezanne]

 

Here's an all-Italian one from the deep south of Italy:

La Grotta di Sant'Angelo, o Santuario rupestre di San Michele arcangelo, è un interessante ambiente (OK - interesting ambience / atmosphere, St Angelo's grotto...) rupestre, secondo la tradizione basiliana diffusa in Calabria a partire dal V secolo d.C.

 

gercate vicino i muri. (near the walls? but what's gercate?)

 

As you already pointed out yourself it is a typo.

The cache appears to be hidden by cachers who only have found caches in Germany. They might have used google themselves.

 

Which parts of the world are you finding a lot of caches with no English?

 

Unfortunately, in an ever increasing number of countries. The more cachers in a country where English is not an official language, the smaller the number of caches with an English description or at least English hints gets. Until very recently almost all caches in Slovenia for example had an English version which has changed by now. In the early days of geocaching the majority of caches in Austria had an English description - now this is a not all common any longer.

 

Cezanne

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

Thanks funnynose, might consider that!

(I ought to fess up at this stage to working for SDL - company behind www.freetranslation.com and various other clever bits of linguistic / customer experience technology, eg people who bought this also bought that as seen in online shops)

 

While I don't have anywhere close to the number of finds in other countries as hzoi I've cached in 17 different countries and agree with others that a bit of pre-planning helps a lot. When I'm traveling I typically just pick out a handful of caches to find, and do any pre-translation as necessary before leaving home, and don't try to find a *lot* of geocaches (usually because I'm traveling on business and just don't have that much free time).

 

What the paddler said.

 

I was in Europe this past summer, and grabbed caches in four new countries (Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland and France). I spent a few days before I left looking at caches near where we were going to be traveling (I took a slight detour into Switzerland just to grab a cache) and created a bookmark list. I then created a PQ which I loaded into the official GC Android App as well as my GPS60CSX. I turned on airplane mode on the phone so as not to get charged, and was able to pull up the cache info. I made sure I translated descriptions/hints as necessary, and made sure all of the caches were nice easy finds, and had been found recently. Everything went silky smooth.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Thanks funnynose, might consider that!

(I ought to fess up at this stage to working for SDL - company behind www.freetranslation.com and various other clever bits of linguistic / customer experience technology, eg people who bought this also bought that as seen in online shops)

 

While I don't have anywhere close to the number of finds in other countries as hzoi I've cached in 17 different countries and agree with others that a bit of pre-planning helps a lot. When I'm traveling I typically just pick out a handful of caches to find, and do any pre-translation as necessary before leaving home, and don't try to find a *lot* of geocaches (usually because I'm traveling on business and just don't have that much free time).

 

What the paddler said.

 

I was in Europe this past summer, and grabbed caches in four new countries (Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland and France). I spent a few days before I left looking at caches near where we were going to be traveling (I took a slight detour into Switzerland just to grab a cache) and created a bookmark list. I then created a PQ which I loaded into the official GC Android App as well as my GPS60CSX. I turned on airplane mode on the phone so as not to get charged, and was able to pull up the cache info. I made sure I translated descriptions/hints as necessary, and made sure all of the caches were nice easy finds, and had been found recently. Everything went silky smooth.

 

That's pretty much exactly how I do it except with an iPhone (with data roaming turned off) and a Garmin Oregon. It's worked in a lot of different countries. I prefer to hand pick just a few caches to find when in a new Country, focus more on just exploring a new place, rather than loading up every cache with a PQ and trying to find as many as possible. I'm not driven by numbers at home and even less so when I have the opportunity to visit someplace new.

[+OZ2CPU]

>On the other hand, when I looked over quite a few cache listings for caches in Paris

>many of them included picture spoilers with arrows pointing to the exact location where the cache was hidden.

 

how do you open spoiler pictures on a Garmin GPS-MAP62 ? or something similar,

when you are NOT able to get online..

when people clearly want their caches to be EASY and to be found by alot by turists,

WHY not add a VERY good spoiler text in the hint.

it is not that difficult to explain where stuff if in text,

they could do it in French or whatver, and use google translater to make it into some sort of English

[+Oxford Stone]

You've just given me a really fiendish idea - which is when I get round to putting out caches (in England), maybe I'll write the clue in French, Spanish or Portuguese - or even get one of my colleagues to translate it into their language (looking round the office: Taiwanese, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Polish, Italian, Serbian).

BWAHAHAHA...

[cezanne]

 

when people clearly want their caches to be EASY and to be found by alot by turists,

......

 

Are you sure that there are many hiders who share this wish? I doubt it.

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

You've just given me a really fiendish idea - which is when I get round to putting out caches (in England), maybe I'll write the clue in French, Spanish or Portuguese - or even get one of my colleagues to translate it into their language (looking round the office: Taiwanese, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Polish, Italian, Serbian).

BWAHAHAHA...

 

You may want to read the section of the knowledge books on hints before implementing your "evil plan".

[+maxx borchovski]

How about looking at the logs for the caches in the area you are visiting. Look for the prolific cachers who write good log entries and then contact them. Tell them that you are there on vacation and don't speak the language and are looking for a caching buddy and would they be interested? Perhaps a good way to meet new friends?

[+hzoi]

You've just given me a really fiendish idea - which is when I get round to putting out caches (in England), maybe I'll write the clue in French, Spanish or Portuguese - or even get one of my colleagues to translate it into their language (looking round the office: Taiwanese, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Polish, Italian, Serbian).

BWAHAHAHA...

I had a similar thought a couple years ago and had hints in German: bodenlos, hinter Stein, Efeu, unter Holz, that sort of thing. Turns out I was the only one that thought it was funny.

[cezanne]

You've just given me a really fiendish idea - which is when I get round to putting out caches (in England), maybe I'll write the clue in French, Spanish or Portuguese - or even get one of my colleagues to translate it into their language (looking round the office: Taiwanese, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Polish, Italian, Serbian).

BWAHAHAHA...

I had a similar thought a couple years ago and had hints in German: bodenlos, hinter Stein, Efeu, unter Holz, that sort of thing. Turns out I was the only one that thought it was funny.

 

I guess it also depends on whether the hint fits to the context of the cache. A hint in French or Portuguese for a mystery cache that deals with those countries and fits to the background story would be ok for me.

 

Likewise Latin hints for common botanical terms are ok with me as well.

 

In any case it depends however what the hider wants to achieve with a hint and whether he/she wants to provide help to as many people as possible or just provide a little help, but not too much (of course the increasing number of cachers with mobile internet makes it easy for those to escape from what supposed to be a challenge some years ago).

 

Cezanne

[+NYPaddleCacher]

>On the other hand, when I looked over quite a few cache listings for caches in Paris

>many of them included picture spoilers with arrows pointing to the exact location where the cache was hidden.

 

how do you open spoiler pictures on a Garmin GPS-MAP62 ? or something similar,

when you are NOT able to get online..

when people clearly want their caches to be EASY and to be found by alot by turists,

WHY not add a VERY good spoiler text in the hint.

it is not that difficult to explain where stuff if in text,

they could do it in French or whatver, and use google translater to make it into some sort of English

 

I haven't looked at the cache listings in a long time so I don't recall if they added an explicit spoiler as a textual hit *and* included a spoiler image. If one does sufficient pre-planning it shouldn't matter if it's a text hint or a photo hint. I can print off either prior to traveling to the COs country. A cache owner might want their caches to be easy finds but I don't think they should be under any obligation to try and appease every geocacher and account for every type of device they might choose to use. The way I see it, if I'm going to another country and want to find geocaches in that country, I think it's reasonable for me to adapt to how cache owners in the countries describe and describe their caches rather that have a sense of entitlement and expect those cache owner to adapt to every possible geocacher.

 

I've been to France enough times to know how much success I would have demanding that French speaker communicate with me in English.

[+hzoi]

You've just given me a really fiendish idea - which is when I get round to putting out caches (in England), maybe I'll write the clue in French, Spanish or Portuguese - or even get one of my colleagues to translate it into their language (looking round the office: Taiwanese, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Polish, Italian, Serbian).

BWAHAHAHA...

I had a similar thought a couple years ago and had hints in German: bodenlos, hinter Stein, Efeu, unter Holz, that sort of thing. Turns out I was the only one that thought it was funny.

 

I guess it also depends on whether the hint fits to the context of the cache.

 

They didn't. I was just trying to being clever.

 

My German hints were slightly better received than "No hint needed," though.

[+Oxford Stone]

Thing is though I look at some "oh so clever" mystery / multi caches with codes in runes and x alone knows what else - why not simply put the whole thing in a foreign language (and I have friends in Hungary and Finland too) - not as the hint but as the puzzle itself? There's a cache in Oxford which involves fannying around with the atomic number for vanadium and I can't do it. I'm a linguist not a chemist. So my cache may well use languages to perplex.

[+redsox_mark]

Thing is though I look at some "oh so clever" mystery / multi caches with codes in runes and x alone knows what else - why not simply put the whole thing in a foreign language (and I have friends in Hungary and Finland too) - not as the hint but as the puzzle itself? There's a cache in Oxford which involves fannying around with the atomic number for vanadium and I can't do it. I'm a linguist not a chemist. So my cache may well use languages to perplex.

 

I don't see anything wrong with having a foreign language based puzzle cache.

 

The knowledge book page on hints says "A hint is meant to be decrypted at the cache site, after a search has failed and a further clue is needed"; which is true for hints on the location.. but it doesn't address hints to the puzzle itself, which are also common. Your language based puzzle cache could also contain a language based puzzle hint.

[cezanne]

Thing is though I look at some "oh so clever" mystery / multi caches with codes in runes and x alone knows what else - why not simply put the whole thing in a foreign language (and I have friends in Hungary and Finland too) - not as the hint but as the puzzle itself? There's a cache in Oxford which involves fannying around with the atomic number for vanadium and I can't do it. I'm a linguist not a chemist. So my cache may well use languages to perplex.

 

I don't see anything wrong with having a foreign language based puzzle cache.

 

The knowledge book page on hints says "A hint is meant to be decrypted at the cache site, after a search has failed and a further clue is needed"; which is true for hints on the location.. but it doesn't address hints to the puzzle itself, which are also common. Your language based puzzle cache could also contain a language based puzzle hint.

 

In my opinion such a cache could involve also a language based hint for the final in the case of a puzzle that is based on that same language and if the D-rating of the cache is high enough. Likewiese I do not have any issue if decoding say a Vigenere cipher is the topic of a cache, the same needs to be done again directly at the cache location. Those who do not know how to do it and just received the solution from someone else or used tools without understanding the background, can blame themselves.

This topic, however, does not really fit into the discussion here.

 

Cezanne

Edited January 17, 2013 by cezanne

[+OZ2CPU]

>I don't recall if they added an explicit spoiler as a textual hit *and* included a spoiler image.

 

I just say I tried to be lost big time while on location with only the info I had available in my GPS

and when I was back home, it was dead easy to figure out where the darn thing was,

due to nice spoiler pictures full of details,

and online translators and previous logs or important info from the cache page.

 

>If one does sufficient pre-planning it shouldn't matter if it's a text hint or a photo hint.

 

exactly, but you know how it is,

you transfer 1000 traditionals to your GPS for the entire area you visit a few days later

you are there for a few days or even a few weeks,

offcourse you explore different areas than carefully planned from home,

actually we often plan during the day if we go left or right at next turn

we like the unknown and the unplanned,

 

we dislike the caches with low D/T we should be able to find -

but ONLY due to language problems we are not able to find them,

this way we waste precious time in the search for them..

 

we do offcourse not complain if it got HI Diff, or if there are a few DNF on it.

 

All we want or at least try to :

is to make CO all over the world aware about a few simple things:

1) geocaching is world wide

2) very much used as a spare time fun thing for turists

3) turists often dont handle local language

4) turists dont have access to any online services

5) turists dont have alot of time

6) turists often dont plan in super fine detail where they go from home

7) turists ALWAYS handle at least a little bit ENGLISH

8) all CO always handle at least a little bit ENGLISH too

9) easy caches are supposed to be found

10) it is NOT funny not to be able to find easy caches

11) it is NOT funny to feel like some one play haha-you-fool with me

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Thing is though I look at some "oh so clever" mystery / multi caches with codes in runes and x alone knows what else - why not simply put the whole thing in a foreign language (and I have friends in Hungary and Finland too) - not as the hint but as the puzzle itself? There's a cache in Oxford which involves fannying around with the atomic number for vanadium and I can't do it. I'm a linguist not a chemist. So my cache may well use languages to perplex.

 

"Fannying around?" Are you sure it's not in a foreign language?

[+DeepButi]

Why do you assume English is the center of the world? What about non-English speakers visiting UK/USA/etc?

 

I'm sure you know English is "only" the third more spoken language in the world

 

I speak/can understand several languages and I'm proud to try to learn the basis whenever I visit a new country. I don't expect German/Finnish/Polsk/whatever caches to be in "my" language. Tourism is also learning where you are and how things are done there ... give a chance to the language and enjoy the multicultural world we live on.

 

Si algun dia visiteu el meu pais, demaneu-me consell sobre quins geoamagatalls són els més interessants

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Why do you assume English is the center of the world? What about non-English speakers visiting UK/USA/etc?

 

I'm sure you know English is "only" the third more spoken language in the world

 

I speak/can understand several languages and I'm proud to try to learn the basis whenever I visit a new country. I don't expect German/Finnish/Polsk/whatever caches to be in "my" language. Tourism is also learning where you are and how things are done there ... give a chance to the language and enjoy the multicultural world we live on.

 

I absolutely agree with this. On the other hand, English is the official language for business around the world. I've been to conferences/meetings in China, Malaysia, Tanzania, France and Italy where almost all of the other participants did not speak English as their first language but English was used for all the discussions. On the other other hand, we're not talking about business. We're talking about a game that involves "regular" people.

 

I have found that showing an interest in local culture and language is one of the best ways to interact with local people. I understand and can speak only a little Spanish, mostly from what I remember in high school and was looking forward to seeing how much I remembered when I went to Costa Rica a couple of years ago. I found that when I was in the more touristy locations that even when I tried to speak Spanish, all the restaurant servers and business proprietors would answer in English. I also spent one night in a small non-touristy town went out to a restaurant/bar where I could listen to the locals speak and ended up sitting next to an ex-pat from Philadelphia. However, I was proud of the fact that I was able to conduct an atypical banking transaction (after discovering that the local ATMs wouldn't read my bank car) and purchase some medication for my son at a pharmacy when nobody in either place spoke English.

 

Si algun dia visiteu el meu pais, demaneu-me consell sobre quins geoamagatalls són els més interessants

 

I have visited your country and found that most of the cache listings included text in Catalan, English, and often Spanish.

[+OZ2CPU]

>Why do you assume English is the center of the world?

 

I dont, what do people always try to change the topic.

but look at geocaching.com it is the webpage we all use, no matter where in the world we live or go or play.

oh you found out ?? it is written in ?? (insert trompet sound here ) ENGLISH

 

I dont want all people to speak english, I am not silly, you can speak what ever you like locally

and you can offcourse write cache pages or books in local what ever code you like..

but if it is important for you as a CO, to make as many as possible turists able to read it,

USE english..

I just say all people do understand at least basic english,

this is why it is smart to use english on webpages and hints and all other stuff supposed to make most people understand it.

[+Andromeda321]

I'm an American girl who moved to the Netherlands, so these days outside the very touristy areas pretty much all the caches are not in English.

 

First trick is to go for traditional, Earthcaches, and virtuals primarily, as the latter two usually have English even outside tourist areas and the former you can get a crack at even if you can't read the hints just knowing the size and location and geosenses, usually (though my Dutch friends find it funny that I know the words for things like "post" and "rock" and other such typical hints). Beyond that I head to Google Translate and either print out or jot down various notes or hints and take that around with me- no real way around it I'm afraid!

 

As for the "why are we assuming English" thing, c'mon, anyone who doesn't know English is the de facto lingua franca of most of the international world is a touch delusional. I found it very telling for example that in China all the geocaches I found while visiting had English descriptions even when placed by locals- a few had Chinese descriptions too, but that was more uncommon.

[cezanne]

Why do you assume English is the center of the world? What about non-English speakers visiting UK/USA/etc?

 

Have you realized that the big majority of geocachers who are ardent fighters for the usage of English in cache descriptions does not come from English speaking countries?

I do not know any other language that can be used for basic communication by as many people as English. If people from say Italy, Korea, Botswana, Chile, India etc meet for a single day, it is not feasible that they all start to learn the languages of all others - English will do a good job however to allow them to communicate with each other.

 

I do not offer my caches in English for the sake of visitors from the UK or the US.

 

Cezanne

Edited January 17, 2013 by cezanne

[+NYPaddleCacher]

>Why do you assume English is the center of the world?

 

I dont, what do people always try to change the topic.

but look at geocaching.com it is the webpage we all use, no matter where in the world we live or go or play.

oh you found out ?? it is written in ?? (insert trompet sound here ) ENGLISH

 

Actually, it's written in 16 other languages in the addition to English. Just look at the standard header for pretty much all the pages on the site and you'll a clickable button labeled "English". Click on it and you'll see all the other languages available.

[+The red-haired witch]

7) turists ALWAYS handle at least a little bit ENGLISH

8) all CO always handle at least a little bit ENGLISH too

 

Your assumptions are wrong.

 

I know lots of geocachers who don't understand English. You used to need English to use the internet, but nowadays there are many websites available in other languages, including geocaching.com

 

I know lots of people who go on trips to other countries and don't speak a word of English. For example, if you live in a French speaking country and always travel to Spanish speaking countries, it makes more sense (and is easier) to learn Spanish than English.

 

Sure, COs could use an internet translation tool to translate their caches in other languages. But those tools improve all the time, so you'll probably get a better result when you translate it for yoursef than if you use a translation provided by the CO months or years earlier.

 

And even COs who actually understand English may choose not to use it on their cache page. In some parts of the world, language is a sensitive issue. When there is a history of trying to make the local language disappear (sometimes going as far as making its use illegal, or forcing schools to teach only in English), then people may deliberately choose not to put English on their cache pages.

 

In the end, remember that, in most cases, a cache is found by more locals than tourists. The COs don't have to make them more accessible to tourists. Some do, be happy about those and don't demand that all others do it too.

Edited January 17, 2013 by The red-haired witch

[cezanne]

 

In the end, remember that, in most cases, a cache is found by more locals than tourists.

 

In many areas of Europe there is a whole lot in between these two categories. For example, the distance from my home town to Slovenia and also to Hungary is considerably smaller than the distance to Vienna. If I travel 55 km to the South I end up in Slovenia, if I travel 100km to the North I'm still in the province I live in. I would not regard one of these trips as a tourist visit.

 

I know lots of people who go on trips to other countries and don't speak a word of English. For example, if you live in a French speaking country and always travel to Spanish speaking countries, it makes more sense (and is easier) to learn Spanish than English.

 

Nevertheless they have to study English at school for several years. What they keep from those lessons is a different topic however.

 

Cezanne

Edited January 17, 2013 by cezanne

[+Viajero Perdido]

...when I tried to speak Spanish, all the restaurant servers and business proprietors would answer in English.

I've noticed this too, and think it's quite common. Each of us is choosing to speak our second language, for practice. It's a little harder to get the other person to switch language, so instead you just switch over personally, for speakiing.

 

It just means you end up listening to your own language. Bummer, because it's the listening-to-Spanish part I need to work on the most.

[+hzoi]

I speak/can understand several languages and I'm proud to try to learn the basis whenever I visit a new country.

 

I am the same way. I don't think I'll ever forget what "Trobat!" means in Catalan. And the old adage about travel is definitely accurate -- making an attempt to speak the local language, however poor, will get one much, much further than "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?"

 

I have good spoken language skills and have picked up a working knowledge of a number of languages without formal study - lots of German, some Italian and Spanish, and little bits of others, including Icelandic, Japanese, Arabic, and Portugese. (I don't count French, since I studied it in school.)

 

I'm OK with written language skills, too, but only if they use the Latin/Roman alphabet (A, B, C, and so on). Add accents and other characters and it gets harder; I can handle French accents and German umlauts pretty easily, Czech and Hungarian get more complicated. Change the alphabet and you start to lose me pretty quickly -- Cyrillic was very difficult, I couldn't make heads or tails of the three Japanese writing systems other than romanji, and I couldn't get through Arabic other than the numbers. So I would have been pretty lost caching in Bulgaria, Kiev, or Japan without English descriptions.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I speak/can understand several languages and I'm proud to try to learn the basis whenever I visit a new country.

 

I am the same way. I don't think I'll ever forget what "Trobat!" means in Catalan. And the old adage about travel is definitely accurate -- making an attempt to speak the local language, however poor, will get one much, much further than "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?"

 

If I recall correctly, "Trobat!" was in just about every cache log for the cache pages I looked at in Barcelona. In fact, I think I may have included it in my logs as well. One of the things that I have tried to do when finding caches in other countries is learn how to way "Thanks for the cache" (of at the very least, Thank You) in the local language, especially if most of the other logs are in that language.

 

The first time I ever visited France I was in a bus station in Chamonix waiting for a bus back to Geneva. A young girl (an English speaking Canadian) asked the guy at the counter why the bus was late. He said, "you didn't ask me if I speak English. Ask me if I speak English, in French, and perhaps I can help you." After stumbling through a English-French dictionary she managed to say "Parlez-vous Inglés". He then replied, in perfect English, that the bus had already arrived and departed and that the next bus would be there the following morning. That Canadian woman,, along with 8 other people (including myself) somehow managed to miss the bus. I ended up sharing a cab with a family from Poland for the 100km trip back to Geneva.

[+dprovan]

On the other hand, when I looked over quite a few cache listings for caches in Paris many of them included picture spoilers with arrows pointing to the exact location where the cache was hidden.

Yeah, I ran into this in Germany and Austria, especially when the cache was hidden in a high tourist, historical area. I couldn't figure out why everyone else could find them until I got back to log my DNF and saw a big picture -- not even in the hint -- with an arrow telling you where it was. This, of course, is language neutral, although I've never run into that in a U.S. cache.

 

I did a lot of planning ahead -- it helps that I'm big on puzzle caches, so I had to look at them in advance -- but since I rarely plan exactly what we're going to do, we also did a lot of caches of opportunity. Sometimes, the cache just had an English translation, so I always checked for that. Sometimes we could recognize a word or two, particularly in the title or hint, and that helped. But, in the end, we often just used the coordinates and geosense alone and were successful.

 

On the other hand, we were often not successful, so it's particularly important to accept DNFs with good cheer in this case, since you may have more than your normal ratio.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

On the other hand, when I looked over quite a few cache listings for caches in Paris many of them included picture spoilers with arrows pointing to the exact location where the cache was hidden.

 

On the other hand, we were often not successful, so it's particularly important to accept DNFs with good cheer in this case, since you may have more than your normal ratio.

 

Okay, full disclosure. I solved several puzzles for those caches in Paris prior to leaving home. One of them was a 4 star difficulty puzzle that I hoped to find but I neglected to print out the cache page, which included a spoiler photo with arrows pointing to the cache location. I DNFd the cache and after looking looking at the photo again later I'm pretty sure I was searching on the wrong side of the narrow road. But I was only in Paris for 7 hours and the next time I looked at the cache page I was in Ethiopia. Even though I DNFd a couple of caches that did I still did manage to have a nice walk around Paris during a 7 hour layover.

[+redants]

all this is 100% english.

 

Not all of it, just most

[+redsox_mark]

On the other hand, we were often not successful, so it's particularly important to accept DNFs with good cheer in this case, since you may have more than your normal ratio.

 

This is also my experience. I think it is down to several things:

 

- sometimes the language: I don't fully understand something in the hint or description which would help

- not being familiar with common local types of hides

- not being so good in high muggle areas

 

The last point comes up as most often my foreign caches are in a large city; while at home most of my caching is in the countryside.

 

In Paris for example I found 15 caches, but also had 10 DNFs.

[+maxx borchovski]

I've only got a couple of caches hidden so far and thought about adding the description and hints in a couple of different languages to attract more visitors. What languages do you think I should use, without having to add all of them. I was thinking German, French and Dutch. Any suggestions?

 

Also, to the dual language speakers in the forum, how accurate is Google translate for this process?

[+OZ2CPU]

very interesting discussion, I think we all want one common thing ?

make geocaching better ?

or worse ?

make more people more happy ?

or more people not happy ?

 

did we find ANY solutions or suggestions to do this ?

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I've only got a couple of caches hidden so far and thought about adding the description and hints in a couple of different languages to attract more visitors. What languages do you think I should use, without having to add all of them. I was thinking German, French and Dutch. Any suggestions?

 

Also, to the dual language speakers in the forum, how accurate is Google translate for this process?

 

I don't know if this helps, but...

 

The official languages for the United Nations are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. At the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) headquarters in Rome, all meetings are conducted in English. Any published document (including things put on the web) are generally required to be in English, French, and Spanish. Pretty much all hallway chatter is either in English or Italian.

 

You can also go but this page which shows a list of languages ordered by he number of speakers. That list might not be the best for choosing what to put on a cache though. For example, the number of people in the world that speak Vietnamese is more than the number that speak French, but Vietnamese is only spoken in Vietnam.

 

For the purposes of a cache, you might consider English, French, Spanish, and any language spoken in nearby countries. You might add German, only because it seems that people from Germany seem to go on holiday more than people from other places. I have not factual basis for this, but it just seems like no matter where I go in the world, if there is any sort of tourist attraction I hear German being spoken.

[+irisisleuk]

.....

All we want or at least try to :

is to make CO all over the world aware about a few simple things:

1) geocaching is world wide

2) very much used as a spare time fun thing for turists

3) turists often dont handle local language

4) turists dont have access to any online services

5) turists dont have alot of time

6) turists often dont plan in super fine detail where they go from home

7) turists ALWAYS handle at least a little bit ENGLISH

8) all CO always handle at least a little bit ENGLISH too

9) easy caches are supposed to be found

10) it is NOT funny not to be able to find easy caches

11) it is NOT funny to feel like some one play haha-you-fool with me

 

Wow, a lot of statements that I consider really incorrect at least.

Geocaching is world wide, that is true! And you know the beauty of it is that in every country you'll find something new. Why, simply because in every country people have different creative ideas about geocaching. Why try to get uniformity and why focus on tourists?

We've found caches in 40 countries and of course we also have a lot of not founds. You go on vacation or on a business trip and think the fun of geocaching is loading thousands of caches in your gps and we'll see when we're there... Is that the way you geocache at home?

When we travel we also enjoy everything that goes with the planning, choosing where to go what to see, reading cache pages, translating them and asking a CO for help sometimes. We print spoiler photo's if we think a cache is a MUST find and otherwise it will be up to our caching skills whether we find it or not.

A hint is just a hint, you can find the cache without it, and if you can't so be it. Does everything have to be quick and easy and doable by a 2 year old just to accommodate a traveler who didn't even bother to spend time to read anything before he went out?

This website is NOT just in English, there a many volunteer translators who make it possible for a lot of people to play this game as well. There are a lot more caches out there, but not on this website, because in the past this site was limited to English. For example in Russia most caches are on geocaching.su, ever thought about how to write a log in Russian?

And not everybody speaks English, not even a little. We were in Canada last year, in Montreal, so no exotic country, and lots of cachers didn't speak a word of English. Do they have to adapt their cache pages to help me? No, I like to soak up the culture of another country, so I will adapt! Language is part of the culture, try to understand a bit before you travel.

And if you can't learn some words, just seek help from local cachers, we found helpful cachers all over the world!

 

It is not funny not to be able to find easy caches? Did you go to that location just for the film canister? I sincerely hope you enjoyed the scenery as well! If you don't like not finding caches, just don't search for them! If we can't find caches of a specific owner or a specific type (like nano's) we just don't do them if we hit some DNFs. You can choose you know. If you have a hard time finding caches, don't like not founds, just go for the regulars or the virtuals!

 

We have a cache that is bilingual, because we want to accommodate tourists with that specific cache as well. But it is a multi cache, so our translation won't help you with your quick easy, just read at the spot type of geocaching. Just appreciate the differences and enjoy preparing more, you'll see it will give you much more joy when you find a cache in another country, even if it is just one cache! Try to adapt instead of trying to change all those caches! Caching somewhere else is not, and does not have to be, the same as what you're used to back home.

 

And if you find a cache abroad and think it could use a hint in English, why not send a nice e-mail to the CO thanking him for the experience and give him an English text he could add to his cache page if you think it helps others who only speak English. Might be a lot better than a CO using a google translation!

 

(btw: I wrote this post in English, would have preferred to write it in Dutch but for some reason we learn a lot of languages and hardly anybody learns Dutch, guess we are too accommodating in helping tourists [] ).

Edited January 18, 2013 by irisisleuk