Hyperboreus:Each forum (or each thread) is tagged in the persistence tier with its desired language (probably just a CHAR(4) property with the language code, enUS, deDE, esGT, etc).

Why be so specific? Why not just use the two- or three-letter ISO code for the language? I don't know about Brazilian Portuguese vs. Portuguese Portguese, or Castillian Spanish vs. Mexican Spanish, but British/Canadian/US/Australian English don't pose enough of a difference to warrant having multiple entries. The only place I can think of where this might be applicable would be Traditional Chinese vs. Simplified Chinese.

Hyperboreus:Now, when the server receives a new post, it checks whether it is in Esperanto or not. If it is in Esperanto, the server loads via curl (if you stick to php, or via http.client or via any http client library of your server-side language) the google translation of this text and automatically adds it to the post, marked as such (maybe another color as background and a small title "Machine translation" or whatever).

Is that technically feasible? Meaning, does Google have an API for their translation service? (They might. They have APIs for all kinds of other things.) Even so, hopefully if you do this the translation is actually something legible. I use Google Translate myself, but the results are, shall we say, inconsistent and sometimes humorous, and in at least once case turned out to be 180 degrees from the original. (I once ran "li povas morti" through it and it came back as "He cannot die." They've since fixed it. I can't imagine a case where someone doing poison control would rely on Google Translate, but this is still not good.)

Forigite

Forigite

...or else we can just post in the correct forum for the language we're writing in.

If we're going to load it up with automatic translations (and I believe that that API now costs money, so we can't really offer it), then why bother separating by language at all? Why not have a single forum for every language, and the API just translates every message of the forum into the language the user has chosen to read in?

Hyperboreus:

sudanglo:

In national language forums Esperanto is allowed only if the thread has gone off topic

Why?

Isn't it perfectly possible that Forumanoj who can read the national language but not write it, might have some highly pertinent and interesting comments to make on-topic - which they could make if allowed to do so in E.

Then why not this:
Each forum (or each thread) is tagged in the persistence tier with its desired language (probably just a CHAR(4) property with the language code, enUS, deDE, esGT, etc). Now, when the server receives a new post, it checks whether it is in Esperanto or not. If it is in Esperanto, the server loads via curl (if you stick to php, or via http.client or via any http client library of your server-side language) the google translation of this text and automatically adds it to the post, marked as such (maybe another color as background and a small title "Machine translation" or whatever).

Huh? Watch'yu say? Not comprende, buddy. Reformulate for the uninformed and non-techies (who may be devoting time to more pressing problems in their lives). Thanks!

Forigite

Forigite

Reformulation: You post something in Esperanto on an English thread -> an English machine translation will be added to the original Esperanto post.
You post something in Spanish on an Portuguese thread -> a Portuguese machine translation will be added to the original Spanish post.
You post something in Hebrew on a German thread -> a German machine translation will be added to the original Hebrew post.

I don't want to read machine translations in a thread!

Don't you folks believe in Esperanto?

If a particular post in Esperanto embedded in a national language thread is above some learner's paygrade let him consult Google Translate privately.

Anyway, let's not pretend for one moment that understanding a post in Esperanto presents anywhere near the difficulty that understanding a post in a foreign national language presents.

Has everybody forgotten what the point of Esperanto is !!!

erinja:If we're going to load it up with automatic translations (and I believe that that API now costs money, so we can't really offer it)

Just a side point, if it's of any interest it's actually quite easy to get Google translations programatically without going through the paid API. My bot in Freenode currently does exactly this by parsing the JSON data straight off the website, using a simple routine that should be easily adaptable to whatever language lernu.net uses. I'd be happy to give the code to your devs (I have Python and C# versions available) if you ever decide to include any Google translations around the new site.

My opinion.

National language forums are for discussion IN the national language ABOUT Esperanto related topics. Off topic discussions moved to a new thread. Non Esperanto related discussions removed.

Esperanto language forum is for discussion IN Esperanto ABOUT any topic. Off topic discussions moved to a new thread.

If someone can read eg English but does not feel confident in posting in that language, then let them copy what they wish to respond to into the Esperanto forum, with a translation into Esperanto, and continue the discussion in Esperanto.

This is an Esperanto learning forum, not a hang out for people to discuss whatever they like in whatever language they like.