Firstly, let me point out that there is some mention of the top on this post. But I am still confused on how to deal with some of these posts. It's assumed that the community will handle the situation appropriately, but I see conflicting actions taken in incidents involving non-English posters.
Usually I take the post to Google Translate and provide the translation in an edit to the original post. I make minor changes where Google Translate seems to have made mistakes, and that's fine and dandy. But several problems arise once in a while. The main problem is when the poster uses poor grammar and spelling in their original post.
Take this one for example. The translation Google gave left several of the original words untranslated since they were spelled so poorly it was impossible to tell what they were trying to say. I had to search online dictionaries for similar words and guess at which made most sense then substitute in a reasonable English sentence to replace the phrase in which the word appeared.
Should questions posed in foreign languages that are poorly structured in their native language be dismissed with prejudice? It seems to demand far more additional effort than necessary to aid them. On the other hand, if a user has a problem, should we not take every effort to help them?
The other example I came across was an answer stated in Spanish. This particular example was well structured in the native language to the point where no edits needed to be made to the Google translation. The answer was also a possible answer to the question (it dealt with overheating and the answer suggested the particular model of laptop was prone to do so). However, by the time I edited the post with the translation, it had 4 downvotes. It was deleted before my edit was reviewed.
This contrary to the accepted belief that the diverse community will resolve the foreign language dillema quickly so not as to become an issue.
So the question I pose is, is there a model we should follow when dealing with these posts, and if not, should there be one?
