I often reply under Japanese posts, and I always assume users will use a translator as I do, but maybe in the context of a Japanese instance or conversation this may look rude?
いや、大丈夫だよ。
Honestly though, I think it depends on the context. I think it’s generally OK on open multilingual platforms especially with mixed audiences.
I see lots of English comments on Japanese vocaloid videos, for example, and I think most content creators enjoy having fans from abroad.
Ich_iel gets “mad” about it, but when they say “sprich Deutsch” just respond with “macht mir” and they get confused.
Generally Japanese posters enjoy knowing they have fans overseas! And it’s better to type what you intend than attempt to type in a language you cannot speak. It doesn’t look rude at all though~
I would be a little careful of words with opposite meanings though or idioms. Like “that song is sick” or “that’s tight”. Be direct with your post so the auto translator can pick it up properly.
If you answer in the language you know best, it’ll be easier to others to understand or translate, especially if it’s English.
You could translate your message to match the language of the comment, but if you don’t know the language, how can you know if it conveys your message correctly?
Overall, I’d say it depends on the specific community. If you try to inject yourself into a conversation in a Japanese language community, it may indeed come off as rude or ignorant.
The best solution may be to post in both languages?
I guess, you could try to reply in Esperanto,it’s most non offensive language I know.
Yeah, that way nobody will understand it
We lack a translate button. Rednote and weibo have translate buttons. We need that.
I’d say, personal preference. There will always be some people that are going to be annoyed by it.
Also ich würde behaupten, dass es in der Tat nicht sehr cool ist einfach in einer anderen Sprache zu antworten.
This seems very rude. I see foreigners do this all the time. they take over subreddits that aren’t designed for them.
I’d be wary about using a translator, even if you use one that accounts for grammar and double meanings like deepL. Tho that’s based on a comment I saw from game developer Katsuhiro Harada. He says he prefers English speaking players just type in English so he can translate himself cause oftentimes the player will translate something incorrectly and confuse him. All in all it really depends on who I guess.
Only if I have to, and I include the Google translate so they know I’m clueless.
If that’s the only language you have to communicate, I’d say more power to you. If you can translate what you’re saying using online tools, that might better facilitate communication and conversation.
Don’t do this in !ich_iel@feddit.org
https://feddit.org/post/2221909?scrollToComments=trueAre you learning japanese? You might enjoy trying. Duolingo has a free tier which is annoying but the annual sub is reasonable (c. £60) if you look for offers.
Firefox will offer translations. On both sides.
Given the choice between not knowing an answer and having to translate it (using a built-in translator) I’d prefer the answer, but you could always use the translator for them even if the output is garbage-Japanese.
Taking offence is a choice.
For learning japanese I would not recommend Duolingo, people often recommend using The Moe Way, Tae Kim and Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly. I’m just a beginner, but I tried learning with duo and it was not good. Learning using The Moe Way was way more faster and logical
While I agree, the best practice is one you can do regularly. If duo’s gamification helps you keep actively studying, then while maybe not the best way, it’s better than nothing.
Ideally the best use of duo is minimally, as a springboard to keep you doing other more immersive studying.
I don’t study Japanese. I suggested the most popular app.
I don’t do it, but if I did, I would consider apologetically offering the machine translation inline with my post. Why put the burden on them to do it if you want it to be read?
Depends on the context, commenting in your native language is often totally okay.
Let’s say: a Japanese artist posting an art with Japanese caption, they would totally happy to receive comment from various language, displaying a cultural exchange.
This behaviour of native language comment is actually common in Asia and Africa, but not in Western countries…
Just be wary of joke or sarcasm that might interpreted as hate comment.
Actually I did it one time, but every response I got was in English even if the user was a Japanese speaker. So I started worrying that the translation was incorrect, even if it was specified that I wasn’t a Japanese speaker. I wonder if maybe, especially in the Fediverse context, Japanese users might be pretty used to English and Latin alphabet in general so that it may be easier to them if I just write using the language I actually know in order to avoid mistakes
Using English is totally okay!
I did it all the time and we interacted just fine.
Using machine translation can lead to mistranslation, even your heartwarming comment can be interpreted as hostile.
Everybody learns the Latin alphabet and English in school (used to be Jr high but pushed back to elementary recently). Proficiency levels are low, especially in speaking and listening, and shyness/fear of mistakes are factors. However, reading can be pretty decent. Of course, people very good at English also exist.
Could also be that many use machine translation, at least for the output side.
I often reply under Japanese posts, and I always assume users will use a translator as I do, but maybe in the context of a Japanese this may look rude?
Can’t speak for others (obviously, as this is about individual etiquette perceptions) but I would consider it to be polite to only enter conversations with unknown parties in languages that the parties have shown to be capable of speaking and understanding.
Using a new language entering a conversation would therefore signal either familiarity (“I know they understand me”) or rudeness (“I don’t care if they understand me”) to me, I suppose.nah, it’s better for information integrity to reply in the language you understand imo, comments translated using translator services are very obvious anyway and some people are multilingual
ActivityPub has a feature where most post objects can actually have different language representations within one item. On a protocol level, MissKey/Mastodon/Lemmy can have the same message in different languages, and the client can pick the one to display. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen anyone make use of it. Seems like a waste. If used, users with their display language set to German/Japanese will see the “machine translated:” post first, and people with English as a language will see the original. English first, and good implementations would allow the user to switch languages to compare.
On xiaohongshu before the translate feature people would write in both languages for ease of translation and so the other side wouldn’t have to translate it themselves.
That’s probably the best situation especially when we don’t have text limits.
It was however hilarious watching everyone find out in realtime just how bad Google translator is for Chinese and literally everyone having to swap to GPT or DeepL.
I wonder, then, if the move is to type your comment, run it through a translator yourself, then post both? I saw that move a lot on Rednote before it added its own translator.
nah, it’s better for information integrity to reply in the language you understand imo, comments translated using translator services are very obvious anyway and some people are multilingual
Sure, I agree? Maybe there’s a misunderstanding here and I should add that it simply would never even occur to me to enter a conversation if I didn’t natively understand the language that’s being used.
