Dear everyone,
We would like to seek your opinion on whether The Online Citizen should allow comments which are in other languages, besides English, to be posted on TOC. Namely, should comments in Chinese, Malay and Tamil be allowed?
Although we have published articles in Chinese on TOC previously, we have decided not to continue with it as it was time-consuming and costly to have them translated and also we were unable to find enough writers who could write in Chinese.
Another problem we face is that there are very few in TOC who are conversant or literate enough in Chinese, Malay or Tamil in order to go through comments in these languages. Without this, we would be subjecting ourselves to legal actions, if comments made were libelious or defamatory and were not moderated.
As such, we only allow comments posted in English.
What are your views?
Thank you.
I have no problem with comments/articles in other languages as this will enlarge the pool of readers. i am sure there are lots of ppl who prefer to converse in their mother tongue and we should not deprive them of that option.
I think it’s a good idea, though perhaps only English comments for English articles for similarly for other languages?
If you restrict other language, you will restrict your own growth. You have to provide choices for bigger readership. Keep up the good work.
Sounds reasonable. Personally I’m not confident with Chinese, but if other netizens can understand them, then hopefully they can contact the admin in time to remove the comments. I’m sure there are many good bilinguals out there.
Personally, I’m not for the idea of having non-English comments. The main reason is that using non-English comments can exclude many people from understanding what the commenter is trying to say, and that kinda defeats the idea of having comments to articles in the first place.
Moreover, a non-English comment may result in another non-English comment in response, which may develop into a thread of non-English comments. I’m not certain how this will affect what others will write or think, but there is the possibility that people may be turned off from writing because of that.
What’s more, there is the chance of a repetition of a comment by others. For example, commenter X has a great idea that he writes in Chinese. Then commenter Y, a non-Chinese, writes a similar idea later on but in English. Someone may point to Y that X has written the same thing. How would X feel?
The only exception I can see for having non-English comments is when there are people who are struggling with writing in English. However, first, I’m presuming the article is in English (if it’s non-English, then of course comments in the relevant language can be used). If so, then the reader should have at least an elementary level of English to begin with, and thus should be able to write it. Second, I don’t think we’re demanding a sophisticated level of English when one writes comments here.
Therefore, I think having non-English comments are more detrimental than not having them.
you probably need a competent full-time mandarin editor or malay/tamil editor if you want to start allowing content/comments in those languages
Is it just me or is it TOC home tab current article should be this (Should TOC allow comments in other languages besides English?) or is it the older article : “Would Khaw Boon Wan send his mother to a foreign land?”
If you ask me about this article, i feel that multi language can be allowed though should not be encouraged for the following reasons:
1. allow : sg is multi cultural anyway u look at it. why ignore the fact? we are not ang mor nor english. english is only a commercial tool for our survival. in future our survival tool language could be chinese. or indian. or bahasa malayu.
To reach critical mass (many non-english speaking sgporeans do exist), chinese, malayu should be allowed subjected to shorter messaging and preferably accompanied translation.
2. disallow : if ulterior motive and which violates TOC standard.
3. not encourage : this is afterall English website and most people are english-ed. english will reach the malays and indians and caucasian and eurasian community. So, it should be allowed and not encouraged but not discouraged.
just my 2 cents.
I am sure TOC is open to voluntary contributions. The lack of manpower is very real. It affects not just the rate of articles being published on TOC, but also having sufficient linguistic support in Mandarin, Tamil and Malay. Any volunteer?
Mandarin help should be easy to source, Syed should be more than qualified for Malay, as for Tamil…maybe there is an Indian professional around?
how about european languages?
do not be alarmed, it’s a routine test,
The only one I can really think of is the liaison officer. I know he’s conversant in French. As I believe, half the world still speaks it and refuses to use English. He also speaks impeccable Spanish and Russian as well. German as well, as he works for a German company. But I dont think they have a diplomatic mission here any longer. I havent seen him here for a while.
TOC has been able to bring alot of awareness to the people, but so far only to the English group. Including other languages could well open a door to more pools of people.
Only then, alternative political party has a fighting chance. It is a very important step if we want to change the history and take back the country from the elites. Kindly look at the bigger picture.
Please don’t suggest thing that waste time and resources. By suggesting European languages, who do you expect to attract? Ang mo? Strange it even come across your mind.
Just stick to the common English or Singlish is fine with most citizens here. Please don’t confuse the site, this is not a language school.
I am wondering #7 and #10 is the same person. Please stick to the topic, European language is not Singapore national language. You expect FT to vote when there is a election?
the Fact remains, many parents are not english educated or educated much or at all. These sizable number of elderlies are very supportive type, if u kno what i mean ;) other than mainstream chinese or tamil or malay papers+tv+radio, they have not much other sources of info and news. They only access MSM basically. Though their children may share info they get from english websites, like TOC, it is usually very difficult to ‘convert’ them or convince them with alternative news.
Thus, I feel that though it makes things easier, barring 2nd language comments only limits the extent of reach. If allowed, some elderlies may even be motivated to learn to do simple surfing.
Time is running out ;|
SUGGESTION for TOC : Have a mirror site based in chinese for articles and maybe some selected comments translated. comments can then be chinese for the chinese mirror, malay for its malay mirror, tamil for its tamil mirror.
This will create at least 3 new jobs. sponsors needed. or Volunteerism would solve this problem.
Can also use free translation software for the main article??? maybe a longshot?
Lets go for complete MSM Alternative!
good call TOC. I have no objection to ur policy.
Aiyoh, I think English is good enough lah; or someone out there prefer Singlish, which is so Singapore & we speak to each other with that all the time, unless you need to teach some useless FT on how to operate the fax machine in the office! I wont be surprised that the only machine they know how to operate is the TV remote only!!
Anyway, joke aside, I think English is good cos all of us speak that & I dont feel good if there are some Chinese postings & our Malay & Indian countrymen couldnt understand it. I would never speak dialects in front of my non-Chinese friends for fear they might think I was cracking a joke about them. I am sure that you have met some Europeans that would gather together & start speaking French & we peasants would just stand around looking stupid; well, I would start speaking in Hokkien or Malay to the locals in the team & start laughing, after a while, the Whites will get the idea & tune back to BBC!!
If anyone wanna post in their own tongue, then perhaps, he should also do a translation; would be better that way. Thing is, our official language is Malay & official dialect is Hokkien, but sadly, most of the younger ones could speak those nowadays.
I can’t really read chinese even though I’m supposedly Chinese. Besides, others may start to request for comments in Malay, Tamil, Japanese, Korean, French..
Lets just stick to the common international English (or at least something which looks like English) as a commonly accepted medium.
Besides, how are foreign reporters such as those in America supposed to read Chinese? :)
Will the standard and quality of debate better improve with the addition of Chinese language? I dont think so. Many here I suspect – well, I for sure am not – are not fluent in the written form so you may have a problem there if 9 posts are in Chinese and 1 in English! It will slow things down because readers cannot follow easily enough, and the same things may be repeated in English unknowingly. So stick with English. Check out sammyboy site – they post in Chinese too, see if you will be comfortable with it. I’m not against Chinese language or culture. We have to stick to one language, ;let’s let it be English, which was the language it started with.
To 8) Tom Ahmad Hernandez Chan,
Yes agree with your comment.
We need english at TOC website.
If i write in malay, i should expline in english.
For more macik, pacik or aunties, uncle to understand what we are talking about.
Count me in, casting another vote for alternate SG language(malay,mandarin,tamil) site. …of course, it will be subjected to the websites’ manpower ability though…
One comment from me… let us try to picture this…
Let say you have an ability to open a restaurant, offering dishes that are friendly to all races, although you may not need to have MUIS/HALAL license. Will you just restrict your potential customer visit to those who are chinese or indians only? Or you’ll just serve to anyone who is infront of you, irregardless of who they are? Who should you hire as your service staff? Who are in your working team?
Using that example, and apply to this forum…
Isn’t it friendly if we can accept anyones’ comment irregardless of what mother language they have initially posted in, with an addition of request to the commenter if he/she can add a translated input next so that all can understand?
It’s just like you’ve have hired a local chinese, local malay or local indian customer service crew in your restaurant. It’ll definitely an added advantage if they can communicate to people of their native tongue as well as serving well to other who’re different from their race.
As for the fear on whether this or other forum/thread will turn into other language only forum or not… fret not.
When you posted the initial thread title in english, most likely the following response/comments will be, in higher possibility, english as well. If there’s an response in mandarin or malay or indian… we can just simply request the poster to add in a english translated version. Isn’t it much better rather than “mandarin comment prohibited”?
Just my 2 cents…
Indeed, to translate everything would pose serious manpower issues.
But if the top priority is to vet through and moderate ‘libelious or defamatory’, we can probably find enough volunteers to do it.
We can then also selectively translate some of the posts.
I wouldn’t mind volunteering for Chinese. You can contact me by my email address.
Maybe people donch feel comfortable with their mother languages like chinese or malay or tamil. I say this base on observation that many a-lever grads who passed mother tongue 2nd language would not be able or feel extreme difficulty when asked to speak in their 2nd language.
So, obviously these ang mor’ised aka westernized blokes could not put humpty together again, oops! i mean they wont like the idea of having multi languages here.
Then again, many 2nd language people like elderlies would not be able to read the articles here.
23) Mohamad Hamim on February 20th, 2009 3.21 pm
yup! you are spot on.
many do not see your point of view .
For example, though this forum is basically in english, it is actually Singapore English AND sometimes Singlish. (here we note the difference between these 2 languages). So, there are at least 2 forms of english used here and i dare say true blue singaporeans understand even the singlish and rojaklish. The Definition of Communication success is as long as communication channels understand what each is saying. That is the basic. So what if it is broken engrish? If message is passed through, that is successful communication, REGARDLESS if words are spoken in Queen’s English, Australian English, Uncle Same English or Singlish.
English is 1st language purely due to commercial reasons. in my honest opinion.
pardon my engrish.
12) small boy on February 19th, 2009 9.30 pm
Erm, even to reach europe audience, there is no need to translate into all the numerous languages there. 2 will suffice : German und France’ , i think these 2 are major languages used in europe, in addition to england of course.
sorly, my england not strong.
though i would love to see the site in different languages, i think the question is, who is the target audience. if the target audience is singaporeans, then most of Singapore’s internet savvy surfers who are concerned with Sg politics would be more comfortable in English/Singlish and would not click on other language versions.
just look at our mainstream chinese papers, how many singaporeans are reading them? those who are reading are some older folks or mostly PRCs who are more concerned with china or international news.
having a multilingual site might not be an unworkable idea, but when doing so, TOC might need to expand the news scope of interest to a wider audience (such news like the plight of chinese foreign workers might be of interest to PRC readers in mainland chinese or news concerning indonesians maids etc…so, yes bahasa indonesia, tagalog could be included too).
on the other hand, that might cause a division of readers…those who speak in their own languages might discuss among themselves etc…but i think these could be overcome if there’s will.
btw, if TOC is only talking abt whether to allow comments to be published in other languages, first of all, i don’t see the need to disallow it…we look at youtube, we see comments in different languages.
but again, we are in singapore, so there’s a need to moderate comments. in this case, if there’s a fear of defamatory remarks in other languages that might jeopardise the survival of TOC, then maybe allowing comments in other languages might not be a good idea.
unless you can somehow link a google translator to the non-english comment, I would be against it.
I have no issues reading chinese (but have a serious problem in writing even in hanyupinyin. hehehe), but it does exclude non-chinese communities.
While someone brought up that elderly are only comfortable in their own language, we must ask how many ‘elderly’ actually are active in websites and how many of those do not know english? in fact, how many people who are not somewhat proficient in english (in Singapore) are regular web users?
It is okay to use idioms in chinese/malay/etc to punctuate a point, but not to the point of typing a whole post in none-english.
Sorry guy,
My english i got score average.
My point of view is that we still using english at TOC.
But to capture the non speaking english like malay, chinese, tamil speaker.
We need to translate the word we put at.
For example: The election are coming what is you opinion?
Translate: Undi sudah dekat apa pandangan anda?
TOC can put in all language English, Malay, Chinese, Tamil.
I only suggest .
Well. I could help on mandrain if need be? haha..
Translation of article would be required and I also feel that language should be restricted based on the language the article is being released in, as what has been mentioned, the commenters would have problem understanding one another. Unpleasantry would likely arise if comments are directed to one another and both do not have a good grasp of the language used by either party.
i would love to see comments or even articles in chinese. My parents only read chinese newspaper published by singapore press holding. I think it limits their understanding of singapore looking it through the government pespective. but of cus, it might not be economically feasible at this stage. Thank you toc and its team for providing good and diversified news unable to be found in mainstream newspaper. Keep up the good work.