[Osmf-talk] [OSM-talk] LCCWG Moderation Subcommittee holding public discussions on Etiquette Guidelines

[stevea]

There are dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, separate (though almost always mutually-intelligible) dialects of English.  For better or worse, English is the language that OSM has chosen for much of its dialog and official proceedings, although other languages are certainly afforded their full stature when/as/how it makes sense to do so (more-local talk pages, Carto place-name display, many more contexts within OSM).  That being said, I when writing for very, VERY worldwide audiences where English is a second (third...) language for those reading it, running text through a comparator of Simple English (SE) could be helpful.  To the best of my knowledge, Google Translate doesn't do this, perhaps there are other tools that do.  DeepL?

As noted, the results can and often do sound quite stilted to native English speakers, but they will be much more comfortable for English-as-a-second-language speakers/readers.  Obviously, sometimes quite-complex subjects will refuse to be shoehorned into SE and that's simply the way it is.  But the sentence structure simplifications that SE insists upon can be utilized nearly universally and truly do simplify the written word.  The spoken word, too, as the Voice of America broadcasts some SE transmissions via radio, both for learning English and increasing comprehension.  I believe OSM can find a happy medium of streamlining complex sentence structures, moderate "vocabulary flattening" (this will necessarily be limited given often quite complex, technical topics) and outright "stripped down" translation, which isn't appropriate.

I say this not to further promulgate English as a "universal language" (it isn't, but it does have a unique place in the world today as a "lingua franca").  I say this as a suggestion to explore SE as a useful tool to further increase comprehension in our written documentation.  Something as simple as fairly strict subject-verb-object ordering in sentence structure can go a long way for non-native speakers understanding written English.

Perhaps an exploratory committee can look into the feasibility of this, as well as the wider, more-and-more-often germane topic of formalizing the use of additional languages in OSM's more official contexts besides English.  The UN has been doing this for years, and OSM is at least as "international" as the UN, if not more so (is that even possible?!)  Our budget is smaller, perhaps we "start small" climbing this mountain, keeping a lofty summit (SE?, two, three additional languages?) in sight over the longer-term.

> On Aug 26, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Amanda McCann <amanda at technomancy.org> wrote:
> 
> Hiya all, 
> 
> I have seen this complaint a few times now. I think there are 2 problems. (i) uncommon "technical" words (aka jargon) and (ii) metaphors and idioms.
> 
> e.g. “to dead name [somebody]” is an new English verb which means to refer to a transgender person using their old name. Sometimes people do it deliberately, in order to misgender a transgender person. “to misgender” is another new verb (which isn't even in my Firefox's spellchecker!), which means to call someone the wrong gender. Other examples “innuendo”, “intimidation”, “retaliation”. For all of these words, one can write a dictionary entry, one can define them. Those words are in normal dictionaries. These are useful words with specific meanings. We could write a dictionary for these words, if that would help. It is good to have these technical words. If we do not include those specific words, then (to keep the same meaning) we will have to have very long sentences, or use simplier words that don't mean the same thing. In English this type of specialist langauge is called “jargon” (which also has negative meanings).
> 
> This is not just unique to non-native English speakers. Different dialects of English have different meanings. I'm a native speaker of Hiberno English, and had some of the words from the mod subcttee (et al.) mean different things, like “town hall”, ”biweekly”, or “through [time period]”.
> 
> (ii) Metaphors, and idioms, are different. e.g. “X is the lifeblood of Y”. These can be hard to non-native speakers to understand. I often use metaphors & idioms. I am trying to do that less, in order to be understood better. Unfortunately, the best way to do this, is to write very simple sentences. One must write like a robot. The language that comes out, sounds cold, and unfriendly, and distant. This can be hard for native speakers, because one wants to sound friendly, and nice, and happy. But it can be good to write clearly.
> 
> 
> On Tue, 24 Aug 2021 23:34 +02:00, Darafei Praliaskouski via talk <talk at openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I welcome the intent of guidelines.
>> 
>> As non-native speaker, I see some words not being part of my active vocabulary:
>> 
>> - see facial expression, hear tone or see other cues - the word "cue"
>> - are part of the lifeblood of a successful project - the word 
>> "lifeblood"
>> - including deliberate intimidation or harassment - the word 
>> "intimidation"
>> - such as retaliation, personal insults, dead-naming, or innuendo. - 
>> words "retaliation", "innuendo". "dead-naming" I know but can foresee 
>> that it's not very widely known around my area.
>> 
>> It will help others if the grammar structure of text is simplified.
>> 

<remainder redacted for brevity>