I recently became a Chess.com greeter (well, I felt that I should give something back), and I have noticed that there are players coming in from all over the world so I felt that it's nice to at least attempt to greet them in their language, be it French, Spanish or even Estonian (ma ei ræægi palyoo ehsti kehlt), but obviously my lingual skills are going to be fairly limited so I was wondering if we could possibly have a feature whereby there is a dictionary of phrases from different languages in order that we can address basic issues with new members - 'Do you understand how the site works?' 'Is there anything that you need help with?' (Do the instructions that appear for a greeters game in the message box come in the new member's language?)

Of course, it doesn't have to be limited to this, it could be simple phrases that anyone could use during games, basic greetings and also things like 'good move', 'I didn't see that' or 'Shall we call it a draw?'

Also, perhaps each player could have a section on their home page where they can list their languages and proficiency, for example 'Languages: English, French (Basic)' so that you know  which language would be best to attempt to strike up a conversation with.

Perhaps it could be brought further, and new members could be assigned a greeter based on language,so that when you sign up, you select which languages you can speak and a greeter is matched to you according to that.

Plenty there to think about, comments are always welcome or if anyone knows of anywhere that has useful chess phrases in other languages that would be helpful/perfect for plagiarism. If anyone suggests online translators, I shall shoot them!

Here's a good one - 'Shah mat' is the Farsi (Persian) root of Checkmate, literally meaning 'the king is dead'.

I love the idea as I am only fluent in two languages and know enough of 4 others to get me into trouble

Well you're probably alright, but I was thinking that it leaves a better impression on a new visitor if a greeter or the site has made an effort to accomodate linguistic differences, I mean, if the instructions for the site were in another language it would be far harder to find one's way around and who then would you ask?

Insults in different languages perhaps so players can show there displeasure of their opponent.

Nice idea Klunky Boy

Indeed a good idea Klunky, I recall reading a thread about different chat rooms on the "Live! Chess" feature, but the conclusion drawn to was that would only split up players; your idea is brilliant!

"My hovercraft is full of eels" - ( http://www.thisisawar.com/LaughterMPHungarian.htm and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_ve37gVwxw )

What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?

Bi-lingual.

What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?

Tri-lingual.

What do you call someone who speaks 1 language?

An American.

I think it's a good idea too - might be able to help with Slovakian/Czech if it's ever needed.

I mailed the support, but they said they couldn't do it, it's quite an operation, but I hoped that there would be bilingual people on here who could help. All that was suggested was Google translator, but it's very poor - simply type in a phrase, translate into a different language and then translate back, often it will be very different to what you started with.

Love that comment Bilium by the way.

We try to match greeters with people from their own countries :) Sorry - it's just too hard to fix all of the language issues at this point.

Write here a list of english sentences you would like to translate, so that bi- or tri-lingual people can translate them.

There is always a tool like Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/translate_t) which can be used to communicate between languages.

It's a start at least, perhaps I shall put together a forum topic that people can add to with different languages. And also apologies, I didn't realsie greeters were matched to people who spoke the same language; I thought that it was random.

Depending upon how narrow you wish to make the conversation, this reference http://www.geocities.com/timessquare/metro/9154/nap-pieces.htm to the names of the chess pieces in 73 languages may be a starting point. Add in a few general words like "good" and "more" (in the 73 languages) and you will be able to express the basic courtesies: "Good Knight!" and "Good More King!".

That's not a bad start actually, good find.

I'll easy translate any Scottish for you Klunk.

I da ken fit ti dee = I don't know what to do.

Furry boots? = Where about?

......and so and and so on  :)

artfizz wrote:

Depending upon how narrow you wish to make the conversation, this reference http://www.geocities.com/timessquare/metro/9154/nap-pieces.htm to the names of the chess pieces in 73 languages may be a starting point. Add in a few general words like "good" and "more" (in the 73 languages) and you will be able to express the basic courtesies: "Good Knight!" and "Good More King!".

 I had started something like that but I couldn't keep going with school interfering, and I don't think I could do 73 languages either

erik wrote:

 We try to match greeters with people from their own countries :) Sorry - it's just too hard to fix all of the language issues at this point.

 How is it then that I -  an Englishman - keep getting matched against Americans - when we are clearly divided by a common language? (See  http://iteslj.org/Articles/Barton-UK-USwords.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences  and http://www.amazon.com/Divided-Common-Language-Christopher-Davies/dp/0966094573 )

VERY divided, don't even need to research anything to know that