Translation issues

[jamesh]

It really doesn't matter if it was encrypted or not if, you take a poke at the mods you get banned, it's quite simple.

[mahjongg]

It was insulting alone that n67 thought he was truly obfuscating the insult, just as he expected it to be....
even a child can spot a caesar "cipher" from a mile, in this age.....

[DougieLawson]

Give him a break he used two Caesar ciphers to make it take two microseconds to spot his banal junk in the signature.

[Heater]

mahjongg,

...even a child can spot a caesar "cipher" from a mile, in this age....

Oh, err, previously I did not pay attention to it and moved on. I just thought it might be Welsh

[jahboater]

mahjongg,

...even a child can spot a caesar "cipher" from a mile, in this age....

Oh, err, previously I did not pay attention to it and moved on. I just thought it might be Welsh

I tried the common ROT13 or ROT47 and moved on.

[rpdom]

I tried the common ROT13 or ROT47 and moved on.

The first word of the first part is a single letter. That makes it very likely that it is "I" or "A". Fairly simple to go from there on that one.

[jahboater]

I tried the common ROT13 or ROT47 and moved on.

The first word of the first part is a single letter. That makes it very likely that it is "I" or "A". Fairly simple to go from there on that one.

Yes indeed.
It simply was not worth spending time on it, and had I known it was being rude to the mods I would have ignored it completely.

By the way, this site is interesting for quickly deciphering this sort of stuff:
https://www.dcode.fr/rot-cipher

[DougieLawson]

By the way, this site is interesting for quickly deciphering this sort of stuff:
https://www.dcode.fr/rot-cipher

I used
https://www.rot13.com/
which allows easy selection between ROT1 and ROT25 (ROT26 isn't supported ).

[W. H. Heydt]

I tend to just gloss over .sig files, so I didn't notice. However, at least this thread is still "on topic", insofar as the .sig "encryption is still a sort of translation issue.

But back to the *original* translation issue... In many respects, non-English speakers should feel free to post in their native language, preferably in a forum dedicated to their language as they are more likely to find people there that will know the nuances of the language (especially as regards technical terms and phrasing).

Even so, English is such a flexible language to it is very hard to garble it beyond comprehension...plus I've seen a fair few people for whom English is not their native language that write it *better* than a fair number of native English speakers. This is probably because they have had to actually *learn* the rules of the language, instead of absorbing it as they grew up.

[hippy]

I tend to just gloss over .sig files, so I didn't notice.

I never even see them. The first thing I do whenever I sign up to any forum is disable the display of signatures. I have never known a signature to provide any useful additional information or to be anywhere near as funny as the user thinks they are. IMO they are just a pointless distraction and a waste of bandwidth.

[rpdom]

I never even see them. The first thing I do whenever I sign up to any forum is disable the display of signatures. I have never known a signature to provide any useful additional information or to be anywhere near as funny as the user thinks they are. IMO they are just a pointless distraction and a waste of bandwidth.

Indeed.

[jamesh]

I never even see them. The first thing I do whenever I sign up to any forum is disable the display of signatures. I have never known a signature to provide any useful additional information or to be anywhere near as funny as the user thinks they are. IMO they are just a pointless distraction and a waste of bandwidth.

Indeed.

Me too, but it was decided to keep them when I recently suggested disabling them.

[mahjongg]

By the way, this site is interesting for quickly deciphering this sort of stuff:
https://www.dcode.fr/rot-cipher

I used
https://www.rot13.com/
which allows easy selection between ROT1 and ROT25 (ROT26 isn't supported ).

Yeah, I used a site that decoded a rotated text for all 25 rotation methods, at once, so that I did't have to spend too much time on this nonsense.
Sorry, don't know the sites URL no more. Just google for caesar cipher, and you will find it easily enough, its the sixteenths or seventeenths option in the results.
And yeah, the "hypertext" starting with a single letter gives the possible options away quickly enough, not that you need to know, if you can pick the text that is readable quickly enough, and the second line had the same rotation as the first, but the third sentence had a different rotation, but was equally quick to find.

hell is other people, how true.... especially if those other goes by the nick N67.

[W. H. Heydt]

hell is other people, how true....

Thank you, Jean-Paul Sartre. (See "No Exit.")

[JumpZero]

I would suggest that these posters not use the online translator and try to find a human English speaker to do a "real" translation.

Well... It seems you are not only a native English speaker but you also live in an English speaking country. I think that finding a "human English speaker" may not be possible in many places around the world and more obviously in non English speaking countries..
I say that frankly and without being rude. At least I hope that I don't hurt any susceptibility (with my poor English)
However I agree some posts are just incomprehensible.

[Heater]

How does Dougie get away with his sig. ?

[jamesh]

How does Dougie get away with his sig. ?

Not sure, but he has had a couple of bans recently. Problem is that turning off PM's has broken the warning system, so when someone iscwarned we cannot be absolutely sure they have seen the warning. We are putting in alternative arrangements.

[DougieLawson]

How does Dougie get away with his sig. ?

What's wrong with it now?

Note:Having anything remotely humorous in your signature is completely banned on this forum.

Any DMs sent on Twitter will be answered next month.

It's a statement of fact in my experience. You can't use the words "b***ball" and "b*t" in your signature for fear of upsetting "Generation Y" s***f****s.

I've never seen any warning at all, ever, even when PMs were enabled.

[Heater]

I don't have a problem with the sig. but it is clearly a poke at the moderators which is not necessary and conveys no useful information.

As it happens I thought the mods were over reacting to your statement that used the term "educational baseball bat". That is so clearly not an appeal for actual violence or harm to anyone as they stated at the time. Use of the word "educational" being significant there.

Ah well.

[DougieLawson]

As it happens I thought the mods were over reacting to your statement that used the term "educational baseball bat". That is so clearly not an appeal for actual violence or harm to anyone as they stated at the time. Use of the word "educational" being significant there.

Someone got their knickers in a twist about that. Hence my current warning to other signature readers/publishers.

[W. H. Heydt]

As it happens I thought the mods were over reacting to your statement that used the term "educational baseball bat". That is so clearly not an appeal for actual violence or harm to anyone as they stated at the time. Use of the word "educational" being significant there.

Someone got their knickers in a twist about that. Hence my current warning to other signature readers/publishers.

Okay.... if this is what the thread is about now...

The problem is that language consists of more than just the spoken (or written) word. Intonation, emphasis, facial expression and other "body language" are all important as well to convey meaning.

Having spent quite a few years writing in an APA and on usenet, I know well that it is very difficult to convey the "emotional content" with just the written word. Failure to get the non-verbal portion of the content across can very easily cause confusion and lead to arguments that need never have happened.

I think it is unreasonable to expect someone who is not a native speaker to handle this added material well when native speakers have considerable difficulty doing so.

To take this particular concrete example, talking about an "educational baseball bat" (or as would be more common among people I know, a "clue-by-four") said with a snarl has significantly different connotations than if it is said with a smile. The raw words are the same. *How* they are said makes all the difference.

I have seen some very long debates over this issue. I have yet to see a practical, generally applicable, solution. And that's just among native speakers.

(And, if anybody has ever wondered about my posting style, that is why I make such heavy use of *<text>*, parenthetical asides, and em-dashes. I'm trying to add some "tone of voice" to what I write.)

[Heater]

I think we are all aware of the difficulty of conveying emotional meaning in the written word, especially in the confines of a short forum post.

But I was stunned that our, presumably English speaking, mods interpreted "educational baseball bat" as an actual threat or even suggestion of actual physical violence.

Apparently smilies and other "emoticons" are intended to help with conveying emotional content. My experience so far is that they don't work. People interpret them differently and we are back to square one.

What to do? Should we just stick to plain facts and bury our personalities? How dull.

[hippy]

But I was stunned that our, presumably English speaking, mods interpreted "educational baseball bat" as an actual threat or even suggestion of actual physical violence.

But some not very nice people do use such euphemistic terms for delivering actual physical violence. Euphemistic terms are very handy because they allow hiding behind "it was obviously meant as a joke" even when it very much wasn't.

[W. H. Heydt]

What to do? Should we just stick to plain facts and bury our personalities? How dull.

I dunno...I've met a fair number of the denizens of Pi Towers. Perhaps one of them will pop in to let people know whether or not my personality comes through in my posts.

Now, if one is dealing with a factual topic (how much RAM does a CM3+ have?), then a factual answer is called for. But this thread *isn't* about factual matters. Rather it is--I think--one of subtleties of language and the problems inherent is reading technical information written in someones non-native language. To be fair, there appear to be plenty of native English speakers who can't write coherently--especially on technical topics--too. So we should be as forgiving as possible those struggling with language.

[jamesh]

To the lot of you.

Shut up.