a 5th dutch member?

[kjeldo]

good morning people! i just saw the member list and i saw a member called fladder, fladder is the dutch name for petrie, and maybe this was* a dutch member


*yes was, because sadly enough he never posted something :cry2

[Malte279]

Yes, unfortunately there are some apparently Dutch members who never posted or haven't been posted in ages. There is a "Happer" (Chomper unless I'm very mistaken) too, who joined as far back as 2005 but who never posted a message
If you are reading this Happer, don't be shy, it would be a pleasure to get to know you. Platvoet en zijn Vriendjes has posted 51 times. He is also the creator of a really beautiful Dutch LBT page. Sadly he hasn't been around since December. I really hope for him to return.

[Kor]

Sounds like quite a few Dutch members are here.

[Vilstrup]

Hmm, gave me a thought.

How many countries do have represented here at the forum??

[Malte279]

Quite a few. The majority is from the US and the UK (that is England and Scotland), but other countries represented here include Canada, Chile, Russia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Taiwan, Italy (though our Italian member hasn't been heard of in a long while), Austria, and Germany. I hope that I didn't forget any nation represented here and I do hope that people from more different countries will join us. There are no active members from Australia here so far, even though there were quite a few in the old N54 forum.

[landbeforetimelover]

Hmmmmm.  Perhaps the Dutch aren't required to learn English or they don't have an opportunity to do so.  I would say that's a major factor of why there aren't very many Dutch here.  I mean, why stick around a forum if you can't even read what's being said?


Also, there might be a factor of luck here.  Maybe LBT just didn't really catch on as much where the Dutch live.

[Malte279]

There are many Dutch here!
If one takes the total number of population (roughly 16.5 million people I think) into account the percentage of Dutch land before time fans seems to be very high (and not all Dutch land before time fans I met are GOF members); much higher for sure than the percentage of the Germans. As for learning English, English is a language obligatory to learn at school in most European countries and I'm quite sure that the Netherlands are an exception. Finding the GOF is almost impossible if you don't know any English, so I strongly suppose that the members who joined but never posted have at least a good basic knowledge of English and enough interest in the land before time to find out about the English original title of a movie they got to know under a different name. Still for some non-native speakers the language may be a reason to hesitate and give up on the GOF before they ever got started.
When I started the list of non-English native tongues in the GOF a while ago I thought that perhaps such a list might motivate other non native speakers to join especially if perhaps some of our non-native speaker members would volunteer to be "contact persons" to any speakers of their native tongue who would like to join the GOF but feel uncertain about the language. The "contact persons" could write a kind of welcoming in their native language with a title in their native language that might catch the eye of potential newbies from their country and encourage them to join, knowing that there is always understandable help for them if they need it.
There wasn't too much attention for the list back then, but perhaps the whole thing could be revived and such an initiative for the non-native speakers could be realized after all? What do you say, non-native speakers?

[Mumbling]

Hmmmmm.  Perhaps the Dutch aren't required to learn English or they don't have an opportunity to do so.  I would say that's a major factor of why there aren't very many Dutch here.  I mean, why stick around a forum if you can't even read what's being said?


Also, there might be a factor of luck here.  Maybe LBT just didn't really catch on as much where the Dutch live.

Just to let you know, we must learn english here in the netherlands. And a lot of people in my class know the land before time ( know it, but arent a fan of it) most of them had seen it when they were young. I think at a certain moment lbt was very wanted here amond the dutch people. So that's why a lot of dutch people will know it around my age. At this moment, sadly enough, it isn't really that populair.

It might get more populair when the TV-series come over here. My mother just told me that we had seen lbt 1 with christmas 1997. At that time LBT 4 was in the shops here. That's why I've probably seen lbt1 movie first of all the movies.. And lbt 4 like 1927126 times..(because my mother bought it)  So that's why I thought that was the first movie I had seen( we were talking about that yesterday in a msnconversation.)

On the dutch google, you wont find this forum when you enter 'land before time forum'. That might of course also be a reason that not so many dutch fans are here. (I came here by watching youtube movies of pokeplayer. and I looked into his profile, where in a message I found a link to the tvseries. which were uploaded by lbtl. and i saw his msn and added him... He directed me to here. =D)

[Kor]

That idea sounds good Malte, why not give it a try, can't hurt.

[Malte279]

I want to try it, but this is a project that requires as many participants from as many different countries as possible.

[LBTFan13]

I find it interesting how many different countries the forum represents, and yet those who are from different countries than ours barely post. Is it a matter of being shy? Maybe not knowing enough about the LBT?

[Malte279]

I find it interesting how many different countries the forum represents, and yet those who are from different countries than ours barely post.

I must say I strongly disagree with this. Members from non-English speaking countries play a VERY active role on this board. Many of them have more messages posted than some of our native English speakers. Non native speakers (and no, I'm not referring to myself here) have been around since the earliest days of the GOF. Non-native speakers have been very active in creating land before time fanart, and getting projects started. The English of some of our non-native speakers is so good that I'm not even sure if everyone here is aware of who is a native speaker and who isn't. Non native speakers have created webpages, have participated in singing projects, have done singing projects all by themselves, have written fanfictions and often translated those fanfictions or written it in a tongue that isn't their native tongue so more people would be able to understand it.
Also there are many, many accounts of people who never posted or posted just a very few times in spite of the fact that they ARE native speakers.
I'm quite sure LBTFan13 that you didn't mean to belittle the work of those members of our community who are no native speakers of the English language, but I'm afraid your comments may very easily be misunderstood that way. I find it very questionable to suggest that people may know less about the land before time because they speak a different language. As a matter of fact there is land before time merchandise (books, magazines, games, audio plays etc.) which have been published in some non-English speaking countries only. We would never know anything about these materials without members from the respective countries!

[LBTFan13]

Oh whoops! I messed up my post back there. I didn't mean to say barely, but I accidentally said that.

I apologize if I offended anybody. I didn't mean to say what I said.

[Malte279]

I'm sure you didn't. It can happen to anyone that something comes out totally different than it is meant to come out, so don't worry too much about it
My own response may have sounded very harsh, but I wanted to make sure that our non-native speaker members are aware that we are aware of what they are doing for this community.

[Petrie.]

The language barrier is usually the largest barrier to effective communication, in real life or online.  It certainly can scare people to make an impression (so they may not to save face).  Certainly plausible, but not something that can be proved online.

[Cancerian Tiger]

Unless I'm off my rocker here, isn't there a computer translating tool which one could use to translate any internet text into the language native to the individual?  Dunno, probably just another random dream I had .

[Kor]

There are sites, but they do a literal translation, which can read as being awful.  For something to really make sense you have to do a contextual translation.    That is why some early anime dubs sounded so awkward or bad, they did a literal translation, and the subtitled folks tended to do a contextual translation, eventually more of the dubbing folks started doing contextual translation.  

I can't give a good example since I only know English.  But I'm sure one of our multi-lingual folks on here could give a good example of a literal vs contextual translation.

[Malte279]

While there are some very good pages for the translation of individual words I don't know of any translation tool that would produce sufficient results when translating entire texts (though there are sometimes highly amusing results). In any case there is no way leading around understanding English when reading and writing in the GOF.
As for one example of amusing results from a translation machine, "one night stand" was translated into "ein Nachtstehtisch". Apart from the fact that I don't think this word appears in any German dictionary it seems to describe a kind of small table near which you can stand (not sit down) in some bars. Not quite the original meaning, isn't it?

[Kor]

A good example of literal as apposed to contextual.  I wonder of programs will ever be able to do a contextual translation.  

Though literal translations can lead to confusing, or amusing, translations it can give you at least a vague idea of what the text is talking about.  Though not as good as a contextual translation.

[Malte279]

Land before time discussions usually include many many terms which would puzzle a translating machine and perhaps puzzle the fans of other native tongues if the terms are not translated literally into their tongue. I really think that setting up a kind of group of "contact persons" for LBT fans of other languages might do a lot of good to encourage others to join even though I'm quite sure it wouldn't cause a rush of LBT fans from other countries it might still be the factor to turn the scales when they decide to join or not to or to be active or not.