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I'm not sure about other places, but in mod comments on Nexus it's fairly standard to just reply in your native language and have the other person translate.
You'll often see discussions with one half in English and the other in Chinese, for example.
Je ne pense pas
I don't think most people would care unless the community rules forbid it. Some might be curious, some might skip it, and you might get a nettouyo being a racist twat every now and again.
Nie mam pojęcia czemu my mielibyśmy to wiedzieć. Może zapytaj tych Japończyków?
I've had more conversations than I can count with people I would never be able to talk to in person, all using our own native languages.
The original posts are in English, people comment in their native language, and I use a translator, then respond in my own language. Is the translator perfect? No! Neither is theirs.
With the way most translators I've used work, it's easier for the non-native speaker to try translating, since the translator might try and use different words that entirely change the meaning, but likely list possible alternatives. A native e speaker will understand the alternatives while a non-native speaker probably won't.
That's my thought process anyway.
Never had anyone who wasn't pearl-clutching or virtue-signaling complain about it. And I've had tons of conversations with people I'd never have talked to otherwise.
Okay where do you even see Japanese posts?
Mastadon seems to have a lot. I don't see much outside of it personally.
Just use a translator and state it in your post. You can literally do this with a simple right-click in firefox. Enough with the anglo domination.
I don't think it's a major offense to reply in your own language but since most of Lemmy is English speaking I try to respect the spaces that are clearly meant for something else.
I like to translate what I'm posting to whatever language the community is using. If I mention I'm using a translator the OP or another commenter will reply in English if they feel comfortable. [email protected] is one that comes to mind where this has happened in the past.
Hmmm... I thought it would be rude, but considering the consensus here, people speaking other languages should just respond using their languages to English comments and posts. There are way more non-English speaking people on the planet than English speakers. It would make the fediverse truly international if people did what you did!
Thanks for possibly starting a movement :)
I tried translating something before posting it to the same language (Thai) and apparently nobody understood what I was talking about. But enough people understood English, so at least some people would have understood me if I just posted it in English. The others could try translating.
Responding in English, if this is your language, is not Anglo domination. A lot of people learn English as a second language, so many know it. If you translate to Japanese and post it, then when people translate it to English, or Spanish, whatever, it will make no sense whatsoever.
When I traveled to France, a Middle Eastern family came into the restaurant and asked for the English menu. They couldn't read the French menu. But they knew enough English. That's when I realized that restaurants in France offered English menus, not for Westerners, but because more people in the world were likely to understand it rather than French.
I post in English. Translating from English to Spanish is better than English to Japanese to Spanish.
I don't do it, but if I did, I would consider apologetically offering the machine translation inline with my post. Why put the burden on them to do it if you want it to be read?
Depends on the context, commenting in your native language is often totally okay.
Let's say: a Japanese artist posting an art with Japanese caption, they would totally happy to receive comment from various language, displaying a cultural exchange.
This behaviour of native language comment is actually common in Asia and Africa, but not in Western countries...
Just be wary of joke or sarcasm that might interpreted as hate comment.
Actually I did it one time, but every response I got was in English even if the user was a Japanese speaker. So I started worrying that the translation was incorrect, even if it was specified that I wasn’t a Japanese speaker. I wonder if maybe, especially in the Fediverse context, Japanese users might be pretty used to English and Latin alphabet in general so that it may be easier to them if I just write using the language I actually know in order to avoid mistakes
Everybody learns the Latin alphabet and English in school (used to be Jr high but pushed back to elementary recently). Proficiency levels are low, especially in speaking and listening, and shyness/fear of mistakes are factors. However, reading can be pretty decent. Of course, people very good at English also exist.
Could also be that many use machine translation, at least for the output side.
Using English is totally okay!
I did it all the time and we interacted just fine.
Using machine translation can lead to mistranslation, even your heartwarming comment can be interpreted as hostile.
I often reply under Japanese posts, and I always assume users will use a translator as I do, but maybe in the context of a Japanese this may look rude?
Can't speak for others (obviously, as this is about individual etiquette perceptions) but I would consider it to be polite to only enter conversations with unknown parties in languages that the parties have shown to be capable of speaking and understanding.
Using a new language entering a conversation would therefore signal either familiarity ("I know they understand me") or rudeness ("I don't care if they understand me") to me, I suppose.
nah, it's better for information integrity to reply in the language you understand imo, comments translated using translator services are very obvious anyway and some people are multilingual
I often see people reply in other languages, even under English posts (usually in German over here).
Not really.
In Asia, people often just comment in their own language. Though, English is preferable for easier translation. Unless some extreme nationalist, most people simply happy to interact with you.
Edit: this is more common in Facebook. One single post will have various languages. Chinese, Hindi, Arab, Spanish, Swahili, and so on just in a single post. Sometimes, you can say that different social media, different internet culture. Twitter-alike social media usually more uniform in terms of language.
Just remember that it could be misunderstood, especially with sarcasm or joke.
I've seen Japanese artist deleted their account because they mistaken a joke towards their art as hate comment.
Happy cake day
Jokes never translate well. Even between somewhat-related languages, like western European ones. Best to just not.
More than that Japanese people have a completely different sense of humor from the stuff you usually see in the West. Even a fluent but non-native speaker will have a lot of their jokes fall flat simply because the Japanese and Western conceptions of a joke are very different. In what way? I have no idea, still trying to figure it out. I don't know if that gap is that big in other cultures, but definitely best to just not.
Even if people are talking in English, it still can display cultural difference. Especially nowadays we get Singaporean English, Indian English, Asian English, etc.
For example, a word in English Asia have neutral meaning, but in American English it is a slur. Unfortunately a lot of Western people does not realize this and tried to "standardize" the language. People should learn contextual language instead of policing from their own cultural mindset. Especially, billingual or trilingual people often code-mixing language.
I've seen Japanese artist deleted their account because they mistaken a joke towards their art as hate comment.
Yikes! I wanted to comment that it would be clear that you're using a translation service of some kind if you reply in a different language from the post, and the other part might take that into consideration — but clearly that isn't a given.