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A new attribute for bilingual listings


alsterdrache

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Hi Jon, dear all, I would like to suggest the invention of a new attribute for bilingual listings. That would be helpful for any geo-tourist in foreign countries with any language other than English. This attribute would allow to filter those listings that have the geocache description also in English. Could/would you agree to that? All the best, Alex

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Hi Jon, dear all, I would like to suggest the invention of a new attribute for bilingual listings. That would be helpful for any geo-tourist in foreign countries with any language other than English. This attribute would allow to filter those listings that have the geocache description also in English. Could/would you agree to that? All the best, Alex

 

Bilingual does not mean that one of the languages is English. Probably what you have in mind is just an attribute "English version" available which could be set in non English speaking countries - in English speaking ones, it would have no significance. Thee English attribute would of course also make sense for English only cache descriptions in non English speaking countries - I do not think that it is the two languages aspect you really want to know about. Whether one, two, three or whatever many languages, the typical cachers will care for the existence of a version understandable to them.

 

Various variants of your idea have been brought up often over the last decade.

 

As early as 2003 the wish to be separate multiple language versions from each other (as e.g. possible on opencaching.de) has been brought forward, but never has been implemented.

 

The attribute stuff would be easier to implement, still none of the threads which suggested an attribute related to the languages offered led to anything.

Edited by cezanne
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In addition to what cezanne said, I think there is another factor to consider, and that is the availability of web page translation plug-ins. If I ever do get to make the trips I would like to Iceland and Norway, I will be looking for caches that take me to interesting areas. I would first look for favorite points, and wouldn't let a foreign language stop me. If the computer based translation failed, I might contact a local CO that did post caches in my language, and ask for help.

 

Skye.

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In addition to what cezanne said, I think there is another factor to consider, and that is the availability of web page translation plug-ins. If I ever do get to make the trips I would like to Iceland and Norway, I will be looking for caches that take me to interesting areas. I would first look for favorite points, and wouldn't let a foreign language stop me. If the computer based translation failed, I might contact a local CO that did post caches in my language, and ask for help.

 

I do not see this as an argument against such an attribute as you would not need to use it to filter. For more complex multi caches and puzzle caches it can indeed be helpful to be able to select automatically such ones that have a user provided English version. But of course as said, this is not what the term "bilingual" would normally suggest.

 

Cezanne

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It's a matter of definition: "Bilingual" could mean "the local language plus English." And I don't care that much how we call this attribute. It's more the idea behind it that counts. For me, geocaching in English-speaking countries is no problem but puzzle geocaches in Poland, Russia, or some Asian countries are almost impossible to cope with. Therefore, it's a good idea to mark listings that are also in English. That's all what I wanted to point out.

Edited by alsterdrache
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It's a matter of definition: "Bilingual" could mean "the local language plus English." And I don't care that much how we call this attribute. It's more the idea behind it that counts. For me, geocaching in English-speaking countries is no problem but puzzle geocaches in Poland, Russia, or some Asian countries are almost impossible to cope with. Therefore, it's a good idea to mark listings that are also in English. That's all what I wanted to point out.

For (most?) Polish folks, geocaching in Poland is no problem, but puzzle caches in the USA may be almost impossible to cope with.

 

In, say, Switzerland, a cache listing may be in both French and German. That's bilingual, too, but probably doesn't help you.

 

A "bilingual" attribute says nothing about which languages are used, and an "English" attribute is not universally appropriate either.

 

For a meaningful implementation of this, there would need to be a mechanism for cache owners to select all languages that apply (from a list), and have searches similarly able to be limited to values on that list.

 

But that's complicated, and hard to retro-fit, I'm sure. Certainly harder than a limited-usefulness attribute.

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Certainly harder than a limited-usefulness attribute.

 

Of course it is harder and it has never been implemented although brought up already in the early stages of geocaching (in 2003).

 

An attribute "English version" available which is used by cacher in non English speaking countries however still would be quite useful. In some countries with more than one language (and English being none of them) I have seen much more caches with an English version than with two local languages (for many reasons).

 

I also own caches that only have an English version although I'm not living in an English speaking country. I certainly would use the attribute if it existed. However, I'm not optimistic that such an English version available attribute will ever added (and as I said before this is not the first thread suggesting such an attribute).

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Once again, not the name of this attribute is important but the idea of making listings available to more geocachers! In the other thread, I found the lovely line: "If we were going to pick a language that best represents geocaching, then it would be German." Being German, I feel flattered reading this but there is no doubt that the only international lingua franca is English. So, let us invent an attribute with a capitalized white "EN" on black ground in order to mark that a specific listing is availbale also in English.

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