I've shifted a discussion on the above topic here. <P><B>Kevin</B> said:<P>On Ballet.co website, the French discussion threads have experienced a resurge in traffic after the summer break, and there seems to be a number of new posters from Paris.<P>Stuart, how about starting a new section in French for Paquita and other French speaking members etc.??<P><B>grace</B> replied: <P>kevin - yes, i noticed the recent increased interest from the french posters at ballet.co.....<P>i personally rather like the idea, but i would guess that there might be concerns from some, that we don't have enough french-spekaing posters at present - then again: how can i know that!?! i just realised! - after all, we have some french canadians, for starters...

I have viewed the development on ballet.co with some interest. It is clearly fulfilling a need for the POB dance lovers who relish the opportunity to talk passionately about that fine company.<P>I'm not convinced about the way it is set up there though. The English language discussions on ballet.co seem less busy now and I sometimes wonder whether that is because the bulk of postings there are now in French.<P>A separate section for us would be an idea, but we moderate our board closely and that means we would have to have several French language speakers and it would be a separate Universe of discourse. What do others think? <P>What I am keen to do is have more Continental European contributions. Fortunately for us, in most of those countries fluent English is common.

Stuart, yours is a good observation. It hadn't occurred to me that in the past week there are more postings in French on Ballet.co than in English!<P>I agree that more postings on Continental Europe would benefit your site. Meanwhile I am also interested to hear feedback from other members about my suggestion for a French section.

Porquoi pas!<BR>If it means more people would access and utilise the site - I think it could only be a good thing. It might also spur others to brush up on their Français and French speakers to improve their English.<BR>The bottom line for me is offering people choice and continuing being an inclusive site.<BR>And after all - the language of ballet is French!

Besides - personally, I'm missing speaking French and don't wan't to lose it.<BR>Although, I never could write it very well!<p>[This message has been edited by Michael Montgomery (edited November 18, 2000).]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Porquoi pas!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>might that be because the only fluent french-speaking prospective CD moderator "prefers to remain a member"? <P>i can see this issue both ways - i find the opportunity to read in french is stimulating, but sometimes over my head, and i know i couldn't contribute myself. <P>i personally really DO want to see more continental european posters here, and obviously offering a french forum would be a good way to stimulate that. <P>as at ballet.co, it would have to be limited to certain topics - such as POB, for example - and then, would THAT mean that those interested in POB, who only speak english, would miss out? <P>would it also mean we were inadvertently setting up a directly competing forum with another board, which i would not want to do, as i believe the best way for the various boards to operate is to maintain unique identities, as far as possible. perhaps we would need to find another 'topic', or another approach, for our french discussion, so as not to be the same as ballet.co, in that regard.<P>for example (and i am NOT advocating this, but just picking the easiest example that springs to mind) we could have a french-canadian section, since we DO have a number of french-candians already here, (but of course, that would do little or nothing to attract continental european posters...)<P>more ideas, please! <P>

On second thoughts maybe it's not such a good idea (winking smiley!).<P>You raised some very good points Grace, this is difficult ground to tread. I absolutely agree with you concerning not stepping on other sites territory.<P>Perhaps a multilingual forum could work; not just singling out French, but providing a space for people to discuss in any language Spanish, Russian, German or Swahili if they wanted to. This would of course generate other complications eg. moderating the thing, but perhaps in creating such a space new people might come forth who would be just right for it. It would definitely have to be done on a trial basis first to actually see if there was a real demand for it.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>....space for people to discuss in <B>any</B> language Spanish, Russian, German or Swahili if they wanted to. This would of course generate other complications eg. <B><I>moderating the thing,</I></B>....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>gosh michael, do you think that would be a problem? surely not?.... are you volunteering?

<BR>As Sylvie Guillem might say <P> - "non".<P>

anyone got any other ideas how to go about this?

I suppose the easiest way is to try out a posting entirely in French (or indeed any other European language), and see what the response is from your French Canadian members.

sorry kevin, i actually meant 'any other ways' to approach this language ISSUE, ... so as to provide another language opportunity, (which needn't be 'european', except for the matter of the alphabets needed), but without cutting off non-that-language-speakers (!) from important info - (POB, for example, is very important info......)<P>have i confused you MORE now?<BR>

Yes, Grace, you have. I suppose the only way is that members are required to write a short summary in English together with their original non-English message.

sorry again, kevin. what i meant is, can we find a way to indulge this desire, without compromising the information exchange on the board? i would guess this means that the discussion in language X needs to be a discussion which is somehow almost superfluous to the board's main purpose.<P>discussions about POB, for example, are discussions which we ALL should have the opportunity to take an interest in, because it's such an important part of the dance world. of course, EVERYthing is important to the people who are involved in it, but i think we can quite reasonably say that POB is MORE important and of more widespread interest, than many other subjects which might come up here.<P>deciding to only talk about 'irrelevant' or 'unimportant' companies in language X is not the way to go, either. !<P>so what other approaches might there be?<P>i admit i'm kinda stumped by my own question, but then again, my brain's not working too well at the moment, so i haven't YET decided it's an impossible question......<P>your suggestion re a précis in english is a good one, but i don't think it would be too popular with the writers...?

interesting article about how mandarin is poised to become the second most popular language on the internet.....<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>THE introduction this week of Chinese characters in website addresses will help make the language the most popular on the internet after English. - - -<P>"Hundreds of millions of Chinese people have long been deprived of using the internet simply because they have to use English to find their native language sites," the Xinhua news agency said.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <A HREF="http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1415486%255E401%255E%255E,00.html" TARGET=_blank>http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,1415486%255E401%255E%255E,00.html</A>