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You Have To Speak The Language

The Earth is a wonderful place, full of a melange of cultures and geographical regions.

There's something here for everybody. But when you travel to a distant land, do you expect the residents there to acknowledge your presence, and to change their customs and language to suit your needs?

If you were at home, would you expect to constantly adapt your customs and language, to accommodate every visitor from a distant land?

So here we have a pair of strange attitudes, from Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue.

Firstly, we have Grey, who is a guest in a foreign country, but demands everything in English.

I'm working in Romania but I don't want the top bar of my blog to be in Romanian. Fair enough I suppose I could live with it being in Romanian before I log in, as being English we have to put up with a complete dilution of our language and lifestyle. It's not my fault the common language chosen has been English but why do we have to give up everything in favour of foreigners all the bloody time. As English people we have no rights at all in the World. The race discrimination act doesn't even apply to us.

Next, we have Peter, who demands service, but wants to tell anybody willing to listen to him how he wants to be helped.

as i read these questions one thing comes up again and again........... please do not assume that folk know what their doing,obviously not !!! their all new to this and often ask for a very basic how ddo i do so and so etc and PLEASE DONT SEND LINKS !!!! they they tried those and dont understand them ok? i had this problem last week with adding a hit counter,i spent 4 hours asking,all every one sent was the same old links which along with every one else i didnt understand !!! eventually some one knidly gave me SIMPLE step- by - step instruction and i did it in 2 mins !!! when giving help please actually say, log in to your blog,go to dashboard etc and the actual tab hey need please. when will some one actually write some realy basic guides to this? its ok for all of you who either work in I.T. or with previous computer experience but thats not most people on here is it? so please please please ,keep it simple!!! THE LESS.......................THE MORE. THANKS.

Hey Guys, when you are in a foreign land, and you are in the minority, you need to make an effort to speak the local language. It's a gesture of courtesy, for one. And it's a step of practicality too.

Google is trying to adapt itself to serve the whole world, not confining its boundaries to the USA. In a country where English is not the predominant language, you will need to check the language settings on your Blogger and Google accounts. In good news, it is now possible to find your language, written in the text that you understand, in the language list.

In most forums of a serious nature, the helpers there will try to help you. But you have to try to listen to them too. If they provide links to additional advice, follow the links. Nobody is conspiring to waste your precious time, they are (really) trying to help you. Try and learn from the experience.

You want help? Help the helpers to help you. Make an effort to read / speak the local language. Remember, the helpers can't hope to please everybody, so cut them some slack, OK?

Comments

Unknown said…
I'm in complete agreement with you.
Living in China, I'm surrounded by Chinese, but instead of complaining I'm trying to learn the language.
Of course when I do hear or see English I smile like a fool.
Aviatrix said…
I will happily provide support in Klingon, and right now I'm looking for help in fixing some corrupted strings in the Klingon language version of Google search.

Not expecting any help here, just showing my internet ears perking up at the mention.
Arpak said…
I truly understand that you have to make an effort to speak the language... when in Rome... and all that. But why does my blogger have to? Why does my blogger have to 'translate' my posts? Facebook doesn't, Weebly doesn't, Wordpress doesn't. Why does Blogger feel it has to?

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