Encouraging participation from native Japanese speakers: translating posts

Question

With the release of the Japanese Stack Overflow, I think JLSE is most likely getting more traffic from native speakers than ever before.

Unfortunately, it is somewhat hard to contribute to JLSE without having an extremely good grasp of English at the moment:

• There seems to be an extreme pressure to have all communication on the site be in English, even when all people in the conversation speak Japanese well.
• Naturally, it is hard to understand questions and clearly express yourself in an answer when everything is English and it is not your native language.
• When the question is misunderstood or the answer is otherwise unclear, the answerer currently seems to just get ignored or downvoted for the most part; truly a sad atmosphere for people who could potentially be extremely awesome to have around in time.

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So, to help change this unfortunate situation, I think we should try to be more welcoming of Japanese communication on the site.

Personally, I try to ask[1][2] and answer[3] questions in Japanese to help shift the tide.

However, I think that's nowhere near enough to actually make a difference, so, taking the lead from French.SE[4], I've decided to also try translating questions I find interesting into Japanese[5][6]. (Obviously, my Japanese is not very good, so I hope the translations get corrected by people who know Japanese better.)

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In the end, I think whatever we can do to increase the amount of Japanese communication on the site will help native Japanese speakers get involved.

What are folks thoughts on this? Are there better tactics to increase involvement? Can any of the Japanese members speak towards what challenges they've had in getting involved?

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Stack Overflowの日本語版の出現で、JLSEはかつてないほど日本語母語話者がアクセスしていると思います。

残念ながら、英語をマスターしていない人が、JLSEに参加するのは非常に難しいように思います：

• 会話に参加している人全員が日本語ができても英語で話さないといけない極度のプレッシャーがあると思います。
• 当然ながら、英語母語話者でなければ、英語で書いてある質問は理解しにくいし、英語で自分の考えをはっきりと表現することは大変なことだと思います。
• 質問の内容を理解できなかった、もしくは回答が明確でない場合、回答者は無視される、あるいはdownvoteされてしまっていると思います。なんということでしょう。非常に大きな貢献をしてくれる可能性をもつ人にこういう扱いをするべきではありません。

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この状況を変えるために、日本語での会話を歓迎するべきだと思っています。

個人的には、その目的のために日本語で質問したり[1][2]答えたり[3]します。

しかし、それだけでは何も変わらないと思いますので、French.SEの後に続いて[4]、興味深いと思う質問を日本語に訳すことにしました[5][6]。（言うまでもないけど、日本語はまだよくできないので、もっと上手にできる方が訂正してくれることを願っています。）

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つまるところ、日本語をもっと使えば日本語母語話者の参加も高まるでしょう。

他の皆さんはどう思いますか？もっと効果的な方法はありますか？参加している日本人の方々はJLSEの経験について少し話してくれませんか？

Answer 1

even when all people in the conversation speak Japanese well.

This "conversation" doesn't exist, really. A question on SE is not just for the question asker and answerer (or commentators) - but mainly for everyone else who happens to encounter that question.

I personally, for example, as a Japanese language learner am far from being able to read all-Japanese questions / answers. As such, even if the question is interesting (from my limited understanding of it), I will likely just ignore it, without being able to really learn or contribute to it.

Of course, the best of both worlds would be to have questions / answers be bilingual - in both English and Japanese. That would, however, require that all posts that are made by people that mainly speak one of the two languages are revised by someone that speaks both and then adds the appropriate translation - which would be a huge and likely unsustainable effort.

What might be needed is a split into Japanese Language Learners and Japanese Language & Usage, similar to ELL and EL&U.

Answer 2

Can any of the Japanese members speak towards what challenges they've had in getting involved?

One thing I noticed is it can be hard to look for the right tag. Even those with a good grasp of the English language may not be familiar with linguistic terms in English, let alone English equivalents of Japanese linguistic terms.

Since we don't have a builtin way to switch the language of the tags, we can make do with adding Japanese synonyms to popular tags and including relevant Japanese words in the tag excerpt, like it's already done for some of the tags.

Answer 3

翻訳論的には、第一言語以外から自分の第一言語に訳すのが一番理想的とされています。なので、英語の投稿を日本語に直すお手伝いをするのは個人的にやぶさかではありません。逆に、英語の母語話者の方は日本語で書かれたものを英語に訳すようにすると、スムーズなのではないかと思います。ただ、今くらいの回答の量を逐一訳せるマンパワーが継続的に確保できるかというと、やはり疑問です。もし本格的に翻訳制度を定着させようとするなら、「翻訳者バッジ」とか、何かしらの形でシステム上のバックアップも必要なのではないかと思います、どこまで可能なのかわかりませんが。

いずれにしても、日本語でも質問できるということを、どこかわかりやすい場所に書いておくといいのではないかと思いました。（今はメタにしか記述がありませんよね？）

日本語話者の話とは若干ずれますが、個人的にちょっと思ったのは、時々英語で書いてあっても、投稿者の英語があまり上手でないために内容がわかりづらいことがあって、考えてみれば日本語はアジアの言語なので、英語に堪能でない学習者も少なくないのではないかと思います。こういう例もあるようですし、言葉に自信がない人は、日本語か英語を併記したうえで、自分の母語でも投稿できるようにすると、意外に間口が広がるかもしれません。

(Doubles as an example of typical Japanese forum post, with some over-N1 vocab and loose compositions)

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Translating from the original language into one's own language would be considered the most ideal option. So, I would be glad to assist with translating English posts into Japanese. If a native speaker of English were to translate Japanese into English, I think it could actually be more natural. But, with the current volume of answers, as one might expect, it's in doubt as to whether there would be the necessary manpower available to sustainably keep translating every post one by one. If we want a translation system to be established, I think a "translation badge", or something like it should be added to the platform to encourage people to keep contributing in this way. However, I don't know how feasible this would be.

At any rate, I think it could be better if the fact that you can also ask questions in Japanese was put in an obvious place (as I think there's currently only information to that effect on meta?)

This goes a bit away from the topic of Japanese speakers, but what I personally have thought is that, even if written in English, there are times when posters' English is difficult to understand due to them not having a good command of English. If you think about it, Japanese is an Asian language, and I think there may be many learners of Japanese who aren't proficient in English. It seems there are these kinds of examples, and if someone doesn't have confidence in their wordsmanship, also allowing one's own language to be used alongside Japanese or English could help to broaden this site's base from new angles.

Answer 4

I think communication is the most important aspect. I'm italian and I'm learning japanese, but I still have a long way to go, so it's hard for me to understand japanese post, especially when they are full of kanji. English lets us all comunicate in a more or less proper way.

If I can't understand, I ask for explanation.

If someone misunderstood me, I try to explain better.

This is a really useful tool for those who are trying to learn japanese and native speakers' help is always welcome, even in an uncertain english translation.

Answer 5

Personally, I hope, especially for beginners, at least to try studying the "fundamentals", not just by asking from scratch. I don't think we have any "obligation" to answer questions here, so if they do not like me, please downvote. It is quite O.K with me, but I'm rather happier for them to describe why they downvoted. Just because that someone does not like someone, then the answerer is downvoted, it really discourages me. Could you, please, imagine, how much do you need to pay outside of Japan so that you can master the slightest difference of meaning in the particles? For example, some questioners, who know some of the fundamentals completely like Mr. Noir or Mr Darius, ask questions that interesting to me, because we can find out in the end what we did not know as a native speaker until they ask us. However, we ARE NOT AN ONLINE FREE TEACHER. I wish people would think about this. This sort of thing really discourages me and I receive downvotes with no reason attached.

Answer 6

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAASE DO SET UP ANOTHER SITE ONLY FOR BEGINNERS.

FOR INSTANCE, THIS Q, I was told to do X if Y

is actually equivalent with asking the whole grammar! Please do some kind of stuff to these I I want a quick and handy and easy answer right away stuff. PLEASE!