Hi all, I just thought I'd share an idea I had and leave it open for discussion for the community, Erik, and any of the other staff members.

I've noticed that in a lot of my groups, we have a good amount of members from various countries. Obviously, they all speak different languages. My idea is to let people from other countries post in their language. Chess.com would ask something like "Which language would you like to view this site?" For example, if someone selected English, all of the posts in German, French, Spanish, Russian, etc. would be translated into English. This seems like it could be really helpful with forums, and especially Vote Chess, where communication is key.

Would this be practical money-wise? Does Chess.com already implement a system like this? Are there enough people who would use this, or don't speak English so they don't post? Anything good about this idea? Feel free to discuss!

It's a good idea in theory, but, the thing is, there is no such thing as a good, automated translator. Even Google Translate, which is the best I've seen, still leaves a lot to be deisired, and also is unable to account for things like mis-spellings or typos.

I've used AltaVista Babel Fish to translate comments with foreign language speaking opponents. I might try Google Translate next. While there are errors if you see what happens with translating their words back to English, you can see that the point usually gets across.

You may be interested in this related discussion ...

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/chesscom-feedback-internationalization-w-different-languages

Ah yes it seems Erik beat me to it, many years ago in fact lol. Well, thanks everyone for your comments!

It would be of interest to all that Erik and his group, wanting not to get involved in translations and I do not fully understand why but I will accept his decision, would the least list, for all, tell us what are the best 2 or 3 or 5 sites that exist.

Google is one but necessarily the best.

I have one site that I consider pretty good, not all of the time:

http://www.howtosayin.com/Goodnight.html

On this site you can type a whole sentence, not just a word, but the languages are limited.

If you type too many words the translation can be awful, but if you type 3 or 4 words or less it is pretty good and you can repeat the process until you have your full sentence translated.

Well that would take away from the fun of the World League challenges going on now! Plus, I like getting to meet other people from other countries, so bring on every country out there ^_^

 What planet are you from, proclaiming that English language is the only universal language? 

Many people cannot speak your language, and I am French by the way, and  Eric at Chess.com is trying to attract as many customers as possible from all countries, at least this is what I think, not a lure, as many customers as he can get from all nationalities to join the site.

So bottom line, do not be an all judge and decide on what other nationalities should do, the Bush problem in other words.  

 I gathered you were from the French bit when I read the first line of your response.  It's your sense of humour.

I have only one word to say to CzarWithinMoons: en passant.

Translators cited so far:

http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools?hl=en

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

http://www.howtosayin.com/Goodnight.html

Universal Languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

English