Why not a French speaking freediving section ?

[subaquaticus]

Being a member of Deeper Blue since October 2004, I have to say that DB is a fantastic worldwide tool which helped me a lot improve my freediving...

Unfortunately, the vast majority of French freedivers are unable to communicate in English and there is no equivalent of Deeper Blue among French speaking freediving websites ...

www.freedivers.com was an excellent French speaking freediving website but it got interrupted from september 2004 to january 2005 and since then could not really start again... Only-French speaking freedivers can almost be regarded as orphants electronically speaking...

the website of the CIPA is interesting but its electronical architecture too simplistic does not allow for complex communications as at DB's...

I should appreciate meeting my freediving compatriots who did not reach the critical level in English language which would allow them to establish effective communication on DB somewhere on the Web, which is up to now impossible...

I lent a helping hand to Massy's organizers advertising for their event at international level... which allowed me to see the linguistic barriers between French and English speaking freediving communities...

I suggest then that a French speaking section should be opened within the Freediving Sub-Forum... This section would obey following rules :

1. French would be tolerated ONLY within this section, in order not to create a linguistic chaos in DB...

2. Within this French speaking section, English would nevertheless also be accepted since English is the general ruling language in DB... this would allow English speaking members also to react in English to French posts...

3. This French speaking section, being within the Freediving Sub-Forum, would exclusively treat questions relating to freediving ; no scuba and no hunting...

Opening such a French speaking freediving section would enlarge tremendously DB's audience not only in France, but also among French speaking Belgians, Swiss and Canadians, probably also to Italians and Spanish speaking freedivers, who often can read more easily French than English... (Umberto Pelizzari for instance wrote one of his books only in French...)

This sounds a good idea, doesn't it ?

[Rémi]

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

2. Within this French speaking section, English would nevertheless also be accepted since English is the general ruling language in DB... this would allow English speaking members also to react in English to French posts...

If they can't answer in French it means they can't understand it, I don't see the point.

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

3. This French speaking section, being within the Freediving Sub-Forum, would exclusively treat questions relating to freediving ; no scuba and no hunting...

Why? what about scuba and hunting then, are they not worth the effort?

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

This sounds a good idea, doesn't it ?

I think it would make things too complicated, and there are allready a few french forums who just need to have more people connected to....

[subaquaticus]

Originally Posted by Rémi

If they can't answer in French it means they can't understand it, I don't see the point

You are wrong : many people are able to understand or read a foreign language, but are unable to write it or speak it...

Originally Posted by Rémi

Why? what about scuba and hunting then, are they not worth the effort?

Are YOU ready to make the effort ?

I proposed a French speaking section WITHIN the freediving Sub-forum...

My proposal deals with freediving, since I am a freediver, not a scuba diver nor a spear hunter...

My proposal is credible as far as it is enough focused....

Originally Posted by Rémi

I think it would make things too complicated, and there are allready a few french forums who just need to have more people connected to....

Those French forums you mention do not have the critical mass to be efficient...

If I asked a technical question (in English of course) on Deeper Blue, I got very quickly answers from all over the world (Australia, Finland, California,...) in a few hours...

There is nothing equivalent in French up to now... Why should French people get connected to a web site where they get no answer ?

Up to now, I was able to identify no more than 3 French people on Deeper Blue (you + François + rib...)

In the French speaking freediving section I imagine, a French person not familiar enough with Shakespeare's language could ask his (or her) question about freediving in French.... ; then his (or her) question would be translated into English and put in the right place... ;

This is not complicated at all...

[Rémi]

The problem is that if you start having a part of the forum in French, after, why not in Spanish, in swedish.... and in the end, people won't go on these because they don't see the point if everyone is on the english forum.
If a french speaking person can't understant english, he won't be able to get there anyway, unless there is a full french version of DB which is much more work.
In the end, if DB as so much succes, it is because it is in english and people all over the word can participate.
If the french forums are not as good yet, it is also because they have to start somewhere, I am sure DB was not so good at the very start...

[Rémi]

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

In the French speaking freediving section I imagine, a French person not familiar enough with Shakespeare's language could ask his (or her) question about freediving in French.... ; then his (or her) question would be translated into English and put in the right place... ;

Ok, Why not for this, but that's another idea, and who is going to translate?
It does sound verry complicated to me

[island_sands]

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

Being a member of Deeper Blue since October 2004, I have to say that DB is a fantastic worldwide tool which helped me a lot improve my freediving...

Unfortunately, the vast majority of French freedivers are unable to communicate in English and there is no equivalent of Deeper Blue among French speaking freediving websites ...

hi subaquatica... there are a lot of french speaking and spanish speaking divers who post here... a lot of us do talk in Spanish but i guess it would be nice to have a separate area.
I will put the idea forward to Stephan and the team... and see what the general consensus is..

i think though, to avoid having too many sub-sections, perhaps a Fr. Freediving/Spearos and a Sp. Freediving/Spearos maybe the answer...

we'll see what the feedback is and let you know...

i certainly enjoy reading posts in French, and speak French, but my written French is rubbish! It's good practice anyway to learn terminology as i teach scuba in French from time to time.. good to learn all those "aquatic words".

A bientot,

Sara

[Rémi]

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

Nobody forces you to contribute to this project...

I confess I do not understand very much the point of your posts as long as you are not a webmaster of Deeper Blue...

Well we are here to talk, so I say what I think, nothing more, sorry if you took it badly . Is it not why you started this post?

[subaquaticus]

Originally Posted by island_sands

hi subaquatica... there are a lot of french speaking and spanish speaking divers who post here... a lot of us do talk in Spanish but i guess it would be nice to have a separate area.
I will put the idea forward to Stephan and the team... and see what the general consensus is..

i think though, to avoid having too many sub-sections, perhaps a Fr. Freediving/Spearos and a Sp. Freediving/Spearos maybe the answer...

we'll see what the feedback is and let you know...

i certainly enjoy reading posts in French, and speak French, but my written French is rubbish! It's good practice anyway to learn terminology as i teach scuba in French from time to time.. good to learn all those "aquatic words".

A bientot,

Sara

Hi Sara,

Thanks for your positive contribution... Where are you from ?

I am a "pure" freediver, no spearhunter and no scuba diver...

French speaking scuba divers already have their French speaking web sites...

The rare FS web sites dedicated to apnea focus more on spearhunting than "pure" apnea...

Then the true "orphants" are the "pure" freedivers not interested neither in spearhunting nor in scuba diving...

I proposed the opening of a French speaking section within the Freediving Sub Forum because I feel I can animate such a section and act as a "linguistic bridge" as I did on the occasion of Massy's competition, between the vast majority of English speaking DB members and new members not so much at ease with English...

You suggest it might be open to spearhunters, but it would be another section within the Spearhunting Sub Forum and in such a section I could play no role since I know nothing about spear hunting (and am not especially interested...)...

To be efficient such a project has to be focused, and in case of success broaden progressively...

If you want to improve your written French, don't hesitate to send me an MP in French and I'll correct you...

Cheers...

François

[pim]

Francois,

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

I use this to translate my texts into French, or translate complete French websites into Dutch or English....ok not perfect but acceptable in most cases and the easiest way is to keep 1 language on this forum and English isn't my native language either......

Greetz Pim and cu in Nice.........

[island_sands]

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

Hi Sara,

Thanks for your positive contribution... Where are you from ?

I am a "pure" freediver, no spearhunter and no scuba diver...

French speaking scuba divers already have their French speaking web sites...

The rare FS web sites dedicated to apnea focus more on spearhunting than "pure" apnea...

Then the true "orphants" are the "pure" freedivers not interested neither in spearhunting nor in scuba diving...

I proposed the opening of a French speaking section within the Freediving Sub Forum because I feel I can animate such a section and act as a "linguistic bridge" as I did on the occasion of Massy's competition, between the vast majority of English speaking DB members and new members not so much at ease with English...

You suggest it might be open to spearhunters, but it would be another section within the Spearhunting Sub Forum and in such a section I could play no role since I know nothing about spear hunting (and am not especially interested...)...

Cheers...

François

merci François...

i am Zambian born, South Africa/Uk/Iran/Argentina educated with a UK passport... go figure

i learnt french in high school and continued to practice somewhat over the years through work and friends... my spanish is fluent as i spent six years in Spain

i thought about this, having a foreign language sub-section in each section, one in scuba, one in spearos, one in freediving, one in hunting. as the amount of people posting would be relatively compared to the majority there would be no need to break down the sections into detail..

let's see what Papa Smurf says (the Editor)

[DeepThought]

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

I confess I do not understand very much the point of your posts as long as you are not a webmaster of Deeper Blue...

If it's only the response of deeper blue's webmaster that you wanted then you should've sent a PM or e-mail to Stephan Whelan. Although you are the thread opener this is a public place and Rémi has a right to post his opinion about this subject just as anyone else. It is not customary to shush people here.

[subaquaticus]

Originally Posted by pim

Francois,

http://babelfish.altavista.com/
I use this to translate my texts into French, or translate complete French websites into Dutch or English....ok not perfect but acceptable in most cases and the easiest way is to keep 1 language on this forum and English isn't my native language either......
Greetz Pim and cu in Nice.........

German, Dutch (which is in fact a Low German dialect ; in American slang, Dutch means German), Swedish and English are very similar languages belonging to the family of Teutonic languages ; then there is no linguistic barrier between all these countries...

It is then no surprise if an overwhelming majority of participants of DB are locutors of these Teutonic Languages...

I was able to identify no more than 4 of my compatriots on this very forum...

I could identify 2 or three native Spanish speakers... maybe one or two Russians...

The vast majority of French freedivers does not have a sufficient level in English to communicate on DB...

I feel it is the same in Spain, in Italy and South America which are no negligible countries for freediving...

If the target audience of DB is the Teutonic world, then English is highly sufficient....

If DB ambitions to open to the freediving community worldwide, then linguistic diversity should be set up...

[DeepThought]

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

If DB ambitions to open to the freediving community, then linguistic diversity should be set up...

I think there is a risk potential officially opening db to other languages. People who can communicate in english might choose to communicate in their native tongue because it's easier. The people who can't speak that language will be withheld from this information, and that's kinda contradictory to the existence of db - maximizing freediving information sharing since 1998 or so .

On the other hand, it might bring new users to db and help to promote freediving to non-english speakers. Then again, db hosting language based forums is a good way to decentralize the collective information.

I can't even start to imagine how this place looked if people such as Eric Fattah or Seb Murat had chosen to post in the Korean language sub-section instead of English for example.

Although the offer was for a French section I don't see why that's the only language that should be discussed about. There are probably alot of Italian, Spanish, Greek, German,Turkish, Japanese and [insert nationaily] non-english speakers who like freediving.

Originally Posted by subaquaticus

German, Dutch (which is in fact a Low German dialect ; in American slang, Dutch means German), Swedish and English are very similar languages belonging to the family of Teutonic languages ; there is no linguistic barrier between all these countries...

Historic justification aside I think it only looks that way to you. I speak Hebrew (that has no relation to other european languages) and English and it's much easier for me to understand fractions of French, Spanish and Italian on the account of similar words compared with German/Dutch/Swedish.

Maybe there is a place for a translation section where non-english speakers could post and hope someone will pick it up, I am undecided.


I'm afraid that my favorite place on the net might turn into babylon's tower.

[subaquaticus]

Originally Posted by island_sands

merci François...

i am Zambian born, South Africa/Uk/Iran/Argentina educated with a UK passport... go figure

i learnt french in high school and continued to practice somewhat over the years through work and friends... my spanish is fluent as i spent six years in Spain

i thought about this, having a foreign language sub-section in each section, one in scuba, one in spearos, one in freediving, one in hunting. as the amount of people posting would be relatively compared to the majority there would be no need to break down the sections into detail..

let's see what Papa Smurf says (the Editor)

Your speaking Spanish is great ; we might contribute to opening this forum to the Latin world...

Carlos Coste is Spanish-speaking, as far as I know...

Umberto Pelizzari is Italian and French speaking (and writing)...

Spain is a great country for freediving (I dove in Begur on the Costa Brava and in the Lake of Banyoles)...

[island_sands]

Originally Posted by DeepThought

I'm afraid that my favorite place on the net might turn into babylon's tower.

good one Michael...

hey it's my favourite place and addiction too.. that's why i would leave for the owner to decide... i would stay on no matter what, there is always something to giggle about here.