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 instance or conversation this may look rude?
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
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.
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.
いや、大丈夫だよ。
Ich_iel gets “mad” about it, but when they say “sprich Deutsch” just respond with “macht mir” and they get confused.
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 wonder, then, if the move is to type your comment, run it through a translator yourself, then post both? I saw that move a lot on Rednote before it added its own translator.
ActivityPub has a feature where most post objects can actually have different language representations within one item. On a protocol level, MissKey/Mastodon/Lemmy can have the same message in different languages, and the client can pick the one to display. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen anyone make use of it. Seems like a waste. If used, users with their display language set to German/Japanese will see the “machine translated:” post first, and people with English as a language will see the original. English first, and good implementations would allow the user to switch languages to compare.
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.Jokes never translate well. Even between sonewhat-related languages, like western European ones.
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.
I’d say, personal preference. There will always be some people that are going to be annoyed by it.
If you answer in the language you know best, it’ll be easier to others to understand or translate, especially if it’s English.
You could translate your message to match the language of the comment, but if you don’t know the language, how can you know if it conveys your message correctly?
Overall, I’d say it depends on the specific community. If you try to inject yourself into a conversation in a Japanese language community, it may indeed come off as rude or ignorant.
The best solution may be to post in both languages?
I guess, you could try to reply in Esperanto,it’s most non offensive language I know.
Yeah, that way nobody will understand it
Nie mam pojęcia czemu my mielibyśmy to wiedzieć. Może zapytaj tych Japończyków?
Pierogi?
Listen here you little… well done
Are you learning japanese? You might enjoy trying. Duolingo has a free tier which is annoying but the annual sub is reasonable (c. £60) if you look for offers.
Firefox will offer translations. On both sides.
Given the choice between not knowing an answer and having to translate it (using a built-in translator) I’d prefer the answer.
Taking offence is a choice.
I wouldn’t consider it rude in the Danish communities we have in Feddit.dk, but that’s also cause basically all danes are fluent in English, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
YouTuber Takashii just uploaded a video of street interviews in Japan on the topic of what tourists should/shouldn’t do in Japan.
at least one person said that in Japan, foreigners should try to speak Japanese. some people might see a Japanese
threadinstance as a little piece of Japan. especially since English language education there is not on a high level.and monolinguals outside the Anglosphere do sometimes complain that their languages are being replaced/invaded by English.
that said, i think fediverse users (if that’s where you’ve been replying) are less xenophobic than general population.
just remember that in Japan if one wants to complain about another’s behavior, it’s common to go to one’s home turf or filter bubble to do so rather than speaking to the offender directly.
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.
Okay where do you even see Japanese posts?
Japan.
Misskey has a massive Japanese population in part because it was written by Japanese speakers.
