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Interesting that MSN Windows Live Spaces has so many users.  One of their posts said, “115 million monthly Spaces users worldwide,” whatever that is.  And that was months ago – I don’t know how many now.

But think of that – so many people and so much potential for communication, potential for genuine, productive communication.  Think of the great possibilities for world peace.  Possibilities for any great thing that could evolve from this.  I am thrilled to have a global network and to be making Friends with people all over the world.  I have Friends now in many different countries.  I suspect that most of the MSN Spaces have only photos, no blog, but just the same, the potential is there.

Did you know you can translate the posts and comments that are written in something other than English?  Google provides a free translator for many languages.  To find it, go to http://www.Google.com, then click on “Language Tools.”  Paste the text to be translated in the “Translate Text” window, select the languages under that (the down arrows give you menus of language choices), and click on “Translate.”  Voilà!  By the way, this is how to paste:  first highlight the text by left clicking and dragging your cursor at the same time, then copy the highlighted text (press ctrl+c), then click where you want to paste, and then paste (press ctrl+v).

The translator will sort of translate.  Don’t expect to get much more than a general idea of what the topic is and maybe an outline of the text.  Language is so complex.  So much depends on how a word is used in a sentence.  So many words have a variety of meanings.  Translators can sometimes be inaccurate or fail to capture an essential idea.  So don’t expect too much.

The translator will help you read, but don’t expect that you will be able to start writing in a foreign language using a translator.  (In this post I am talking about online electronic translators, not the human variety.)

What if you don’t know what the language is?  In that case what I’ve done is copied a few of the foreign words and pasted them into Google and searched on them.  Then on the results pages, I look for clues like the name of a country, the name of a capital city or major city, a type of money or music or cooking, or words that might be similar in both English and the other language.  I look especially at the Web addresses as these are often in English.  When I click on results I look for national flags – many flags are identified near the end of the Google translator page.

Some languages look very similar to me, for example, Portuguese and Italian.  If you can narrow down the possibilities; for example, say it looks like a romance language, run the translator first for one, then another and see which gives mainly English as a result.

You can always leave a message at an MSN Space you are trying to translate and ask, “What language are you writing in?”  See if they can give you the answer.  The Profile for the Space may give a location or other clues. 

Of course if the original text is misspelled, the translator will choke on it.

And of course, if your text is private or confidential, don’t put it into the translator (unless you don’t mind sharing it with the owner of the translator).

What could be more intricate and complex than a language?

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With Chinese, keep in mind that “simplified” characters are used in mainland China, and “traditional” characters are still used in some other places, like Taiwan.  It’s not easy to know which characters are which, but generally, the simplified look more simple.  That’s what I’ve been told.

If you want to test a translator, first translate from English to whatever language you are testing, let’s say Spanish.  Then copy and paste the resultant Spanish text into the translator and make it translate that into English.  See how closely it matches the English you started with.

I tried this with Google and a couple of other translator Web sites (all free), and here are the results:

Google translator: 

“I welcome you to my Web site and wish you a pleasant day.”

“Le doy la bienvenida a mi sitio Web y le deseamos un agradable día.”

“I welcome you to my Web site and wish you a pleasant day.”

PROMT translator:

“I welcome you to my Web site and wish you a pleasant day.”

“Doy la bienvenida a usted a mi Sitio Web y le deseo un día agradable.”

“I give the welcome to you to my Web site and wish him an agreeable day.”

SDL translator:

“I welcome you to my Web site and wish you a pleasant day.”

“Yo le doy la bienvenida a mi sitio web y le deseo un día agradable.”

“I welcome to my website and him desire a pleasant day.”

To find another translator online, type into Google “translate French” or whatever language you need translated.  Of course not all the results Google provides will be translators that actually work, and not all the results will be translators, so it takes a bit of patience.  When I did this, one supposed “translator” was some sort of threat that my virus protection software warned me not to open. 

Once you find a good translator, bookmark it in your Favorites, so you can quickly refer to it when visiting Friends in foreign places.  I’m not endorsing the translators on this page – you may be able to find a better one.

Some people write in English, even though it is not their first language, because they are practicing their English, or they want more visibility on the Web.  Since many languages are disappearing, I’d really prefer that people practice their own languages, and promote their own languages.  Sustain your own language!

Can you really practice your own language?  I’m still practicing at writing American English and it is my first language (and the only language I feel comfortable speaking or writing in).  I am still learning its complexities.  I think that written English is continually evolving, changing its form to more closely mimic spoken English which is also constantly evolving, but likely at a faster pace.  Think how much English has changed from the days of Shakespeare, hundreds of years ago – I’ll admit I can’t understand Shakespeare in the original.  When I hear teens talking, I just hope English doesn’t evolve so fast I can’t keep on learning it.

While the warmongers are bellowing at each other, thumping their chests, and circling each other over some oil field or gas pipeline or their “territory,” and ready to bomb, kill thousands, tens of thousands or more, and empty whole countries into refugee camps, the rest of us, who are not so impaired in our thinking, can devote our energies to improving communications, building communities (even online communities), enhancing cooperation, making the Earth greener and more child-friendly, engaging in civilized pursuits, learning what makes for a truly satisfying and fulfilling life, and making friends in foreign places.

I’ll guess MSN Windows Live Spaces supports at least 16 languages, looking at my “MSN help menu” when I search it for “language.”  Think how great that is, that a community is being supported and nourished here, despite language differences.  Each one can view the menus and module headings in MSN Spaces in their own language, even though the content written by the Space owner does not change.  For people from China visiting my Space, all my modules appear to have headings in Chinese (unless a visitor has selected English, etc. or unless I’ve changed the default heading).  Isn’t that wonderful!!!  By the way, the MSN ads are also language specific in case you wanted to know.

I know that because one day I inadvertently changed my Space so it appeared to me to be in Danish.  A link can contain a language command and if you click on a “Referring address” link on your Statistics page, you could suddenly be taking on the lingual preference of your visitor, unless MSN has made changes since I got in trouble that way.  Suddenly the ads, menus, and module headings in all of MSN Space were appearing to me in Danish!  Oh help!

I got curious as to how many people are actually blogging in English on MSN Windows Live Spaces.  I searched on the word “the” in their search engine (at the top of this page) and got about 1.64 million people, but only 403,000 blog entries  – which means how many people blogging in English?  Maybe “only” 5,000 or so (??) if each has about as many blog entries as I have.  Will I ever get to visit them all?  I doubt it.

Dear visitor, welcome!  I hope we can be Friends.

Dear Friends, thank you for being my Friend.

-2008-

Slide show, music, and folders on my main page.

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