Who actually has multi language customer support, anyone out there?

This may quickly turn into a rant. Say you log into find a bunch of IM's stacked, well pretty much all night, getting angrier and angrier, and oddly turning into a language you have no clue about.

K I can speak french well, maybe even muddle through spanish if I had to. They are similar, most latin-euro languages can be somewhat at least understood. You get the verbs, that sort. But german, WFT is that. It may as well be japenise to me, it is so foreign, pun intended. And no offence to those who speak german, but you must notice the ass backwards-ness it has compared to english. Well so does french really, it is almost 100% backwards in structure, but I grew up speaking it.

Oh yes, so what does one do, who prides their customer service that is. When one gets an angry IM and a following conversation in broken words that make no sense. What do ya do? This must be a common type of problem.

Do any of you staff people of language, or use computer translators? Just curious.

obviously the first thing i do is point out how ass backward their language is.

Funny. To us Germans, it's just the other way around.

YOU TYPE VERY LOUDLY

I thought everyone knew that.

I've used babel fish in the past, of course one of the first things you want to tell them is you're using a computer translator. I've also got friends who speak different languages, and have occasionally asked them to help -- either paste some text into chat for them to figure out, or on rare occasions, ask the friend to talk directly with the customer on my behalf.

I suppose if that fails, you could try and ask (with babelfish etc) them to find an english-speaking friend to translate for them.

-Atashi

You know- seriously and I know u were venting and all- but starting with criticizing the German language is not a good starting point- not to mention the fact that English actually has Germanic influences in its structure (wasser- water, is one I can think of instantly), along with the Latin roots.

I won't contribute further suggestions because the others made perfectly reasonable and doable ones. I would suggest perhaps for the future you arm your self with a pre-written notecard that states in several languages ur proposed resolution to a customer service problem. Wish I had had one that said "A gift to you" in Italian the other day- I was handing out random gifts when an Italian speaking girl came into the store- she declined it - spanish and french weren't clear enough to her I suppose

I've used babel fish as well, it isn't the best but it will get you fairly close.

There is a dearth of good translation services in SL, many of us would like to set up our instruction notecards in multi language.

A N D S L O W L Y

Pep (Didn't we just have a thread like this about tourists?)

Nope! English takes in orphan vocabulary but has little in common in structure with German.

Pep (or Latin)

I said influences - taking in other words is an influence- something most languages do as well. I offer Swahili for comparison- they had no world for bicycle- so the have biciclete (sounds like that- beats me how it's spelled). Asante sana, buana mkubwa...

That's what you said and that's what I was commenting on.

Pep (Your post reiterates my point about vocabulary)

You know something- after I left the house I realized what I had said and what u had said I did say structure and you took it at the real meaning of course- I did not express myself properly (funny in a vocab discussion ) I meant there are components to the English language derivative from various cultural and linguistic influences, whereas structure would of course refer to grammar and such. I am fond in particular of say, "the black cat" vs "le chat noir".

sorry if you took that as an insult. but latin tongues, like spanish and french are sort of one structure, and english is the opposite of that, and i just meant that German isn't a latin derived tongue like french, or even english for tha matter. it is backwards, literally and figuratively, in its structure. I thought it was pretty clear when I explained that, I also insulted french as well, in that post, which is my native tongue, so I obviously didn't intend it to be mean. And not even french, it is a totally backwards Canadian french that nobody but locals even understands, so if anyone is looking dumb then it surely is myself

Who actually has multi language customer support, anyone out there?

Is Katt's first language English?

/maybe the forerunner?

My primary language for customer support is English, as that is my own native language.

It's been very rare when I have had a cusomer whose primary language was not English, and who did not also speak English better than I speak their native language. In almost every case, their ability to speak English was better than my ability to speak their language.

I speak a little French, German, Spanish and Japanese. But my vocabulary is limited in those languages, which makes it difficult for me to express myself clearly. So what I tend to try to do is to communicate in English as best I can, and then use Babelfish or the Babbler/Debabbler in-world translation HUDs to work through any points where language seems particularly to be a barrier to understanding.

I speak dutch, english french and german.

And I must say it helps a lot to communicate with the clients.
It gives a lot more trust to a potentioanl client when they can communicate to there land lord in there own laguage. Especially when there english is not good.

Recognising that SL is a world-wide thing, we have done our best to get as broad a team when it comes to languages. They have to be moderately fluent, though, otherwise they miss the nuances of the language which are so critical for customer support.

At the moment we can deal pretty decently in English, Dutch, German, French, Italian and Japanese, and have a few "Friends of the Ichiba" who can help us out with Mandarin and Spanish.

We have found Babelfish to be pretty useless for anything but the most superficial communications.

I realise I am straying off topic and I do hope the OP got their problem resolved -but gosh ain't Sl grand just for this very thing? I love all the cultural influences and even the rants in other languages heard in world are cool

I run a translation service provider within SL and I have noticed a recent increase in demand to support multiple languages. I suspect that there may be two factors at work, the winter season is on the way in the northern hemisphere and there is therefore a general increase in business activity across SL. Secondly and possibly more importantly LL's recent announcement offering the SL viewer in 10 languages has had a knock on effect. I think some businesses believe that if LL acknowledges the benefit of offering their product a variety of languages then it makes sense for their business also.

If I am asked for advice I suggest that the business creates an FAQ in English and when you have an issue in a certain language translate the FAQ to that language, but only if its a language prevalent in SL. These FAQ's can then be added to the item being sold or added to a website/product listing. This means that there is only the expenditure when absolutely needed and spreads the cost of translating over several weeks/months depending on demand.

Another suggestion, if you want to be more proactive is to look at the statistics that LL put out about the country of residence of users and gear your business to be able to service those languages.

I speak english and NO other languages, although I have been taking steps to learn swedish... NEway... If they want support I will do the best I can and if that includes googling, translating etc.. I will..

I dont think many would not.

Also, it seems to me that many many people speak english or are learning english and its good practice for them..

I once had a long conversation with a guy from russia, he and I both used a web translation tool for our conversation.. Yes, there were long pauses where we were googling responses.. But I'm glad we did he was a very cool dude.

I'll muddle through any language with the translation tools available, I just hope they understand I didn't really mean to call them a jackass.. I ment to say... Jack has an ass he keeps in the barn...

/me coughs

Yeah how about swedish huh?!??!?!?!

I have to use IM translator.

Tarina,

My apologies for not replying, I've been away for a few days. Are you looking for a Swedish translation? If so I have one available. The full list is here - http://verballis-translation-services.blogspot.com/2008/07/verballis-summary.html

Regards,

Cayman

You understand that their angry words are just a cry for help and a solution, same in any language but unless you can speak their language better, just chill and do the best you both can with whatever means.

I have European friends, so will pull one in for a linguistic session whenever it has been relevant.

I can say "I love you" in a few languages, that gets me by.