Translator - Automatic or Selective (Paid feature?)

[wytchcat]

Title
Translator - Automatic or Selective (Paid feature?)

Short, concise description of the idea
Been said before but bares repeating. LJ needs a translation option.

Full description of the idea
This has been suggested before... and commented negatively based largely on the "translators aren't always accurate" statement.

While true, that isn't really a reason to not communicate. If anything it is a reason to then open a dialogue. We are almost 5 yrs down the road from having a Russian company buy LJ, surely we can try to find ways to communicate with each other inside our own venue.

LJ is a strong community BUILT on strong communities. But without its own translation feature it will never really be a global community. A translator should be a universal default available to all users. I used to love the "random" find feature but it has become almost useless to me. One of my favorite art communities is 98% Russian, which is fine but I am missing incredible amounts of the meaning behind content as I often don't have the time to actually pull text into a 3rd party translator.

I will say that a translator is something that would trump all other reasons for getting a paid account if that is what it takes to get it. In a paid account instance it would be selective "Translate this post/comment?" either as a reader or a poster.

And it does need to address multiple languages not just English/Russian. While I almost never encounter any other languages... I know they are here somewhere.

An ordered list of benefits

• 1. Actually allow your entire user base to communicate with each other.
• 2. If set up as a paid account feature, would drive sales.
• 3. Would bring back a large number of users who have left due to feeling that they are missing out on content or that LJ has become too Russian (or which ever language)
• 4. Would allow members of the same community to read each others posts. (IE Writer's Block, Contemporary Art etc)
• 5. Help overcome the "Us vs Them" mentality that I see in previous comments about this type of suggestion and elsewhere on LJ.

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

• 1. Someone has to code it.
• 2. A whole lot of languages out there... a whole lot of work.
• 3. Translators are faulty. But... we know that ALL translators are faulty, nature of the beast. Add a disclaimer of just that and move on.
• 4. This suggestion has been made numerous times before and not acted on so someone somewhere has probably already decided not to do it... so have to fight that battle again.