I love reading blogs all the time. There are so many people with different experiences and different reasons for wanting to blog. This includes bloggers with language barriers to overcome. This article will cover my series- Blogging Ain’t Perfect. I hope to address the language barrier issue.
I am not perfect when it comes to writing and English is my first language. It is not uncommon that I might have a grammar issue from time to time. In fact, every so often I get an email with a correction. I normally am happy to correct the issue and even grateful to my readers who care enough to send me corrections.
However, for those who do not write or speak English as a first language, I do know from working and speaking with people from many countries that it can be hard to blog. You know what you want to say in your own language, but when you translate it over to English, it does not always read the same way.
I have read some great articles from non-English writers/ speakers, but I have also read some pretty bad ones that had great potential. For some bloggers, this could be a problem, especially if parts of the article do not make sense.
Some common mistakes:
- Writing the opposite of what you intended to mean
- Wrong word
- Sentence is awkwardly written and makes no sense at all
How you can avoid these mistakes:
- Carefully proof your article
- If you are not sure, ask a friend to proof your blog
- Use a translation program (please note that you should proof what the program outputs)
Do not be discouraged if you have a hard time writing in English or any language that is not your native one. There is always a solution. And by the way, as time goes by, with practice, your writing does get better. 🙂 Also, most bloggers and readers alike are very understanding and are more than willing to give you a helpful hand if you ask.
For those who have been blogging for some time in English as a second language or third (fourth, or more), what advice do you have to give to your fellow bloggers wanting to become better?
I believe I'll be the first one who post comment. Well, I can relate to that issue about "english as my second language". I'm from the Philippines and tagalog is the national language in here yet it does not hinder me to pursue blogging.
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Yes Nile You are absolutely correct. I do have these kind of problems with me. You really inspire me so much. Please keep it up. Thanks!!
English is not my first language but I got all my education in English but I know that one way to improve your English is by getting greater exposure to the English language- read more articles in english and write more, watch more english movies, sing in english :), perhaps talk in english more. with time, your english will definitely improve.
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Many blogs translated by non-native speakers are out there and you can always tell when they use something like Google translate. But you give some important tips.
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Thank you for this great post! I think it does help to raise awareness that not all of us have English as a first language!
I myself was born and raised in Germany and simply studied the English language and I still do! Some people say that my English is better than my German now! 😉
In my experience one has to really want to learn and keep on learning a foreign language. It gets easier and easier anyway and the best of all is when you start understanding the English sense of humor!
Reading good blogs, reading books, reading articles, reading a lot really does help and we also have to remember that a language is never static. New words, new phrases, well, I’m really quite passionate about learning English!
Greetings from sunny Spain! (Yes, you guessed it, I also speak Spanish!)
We all know that there is no perfect person but I think, we can improve the English in time…
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I have been writing in English for several years now and have overcome my initial problems by learning from mistakes. First of all I would use the syntax checker in Word to highlight the errors. With anything that I was still unsure of, I would search for the phrase or something similar on Google and if I found others using it I knew it was okay. Lastly I think proof reading is very important, even for people who have English as their first language.
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I'm really having lot of problems in my writing.. as a beginner in blogging i need to learn a lot about content writing.. Surely will follow the steps in your blog for improving my writing skill.. Thanks a lot for sharing 😀
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Enjoyed the read. 🙂 gonna share it across my friends network now. 😛 hope it will help some beginner bloggers. Cheers.
Robin
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Well, it is really hard to blog when English is not your mother language and that's the reason why I blog, to practice my English. I hope I am getting better though 😛
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Yes Nile You are absolutely correct. I do have these kind of problems with me. TY
Yes Nile You are absolutely correct. I do have these kind of problems with me. ty u
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Sometimes I'm shocked at the simple spelling and grammar errors published on very popular well-read blogs… stuff that's easily solvable with an everyday Spellcheck feature. If you have a blog and are serious about it, how difficult is it to simply run through a spellcheck??
I certainly give a lot more leeway when it comes to foreign blogs who didn't have English as a first language. Many times these people are multi-lingual and I can't even read/write a second language very well at all. Of course that's what we have Google Translate for 🙂
This is my problem too. English is not my first language and it affects me badly. Though i just write and post it to my blog, so no one is stopping me if there are grammatical errors in it but ezinearticles stops me a lot because they say it is contains spelling, sentence structure and blah blah. But it never stop me, i keep striving to fix this problem by consulting books on grammar and i must tell you that it has helped me a lot.
Hi! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I genuinely enjoy reading through your articles and I rarely leave comment on articles, but your article encouraged me to compliment your writings. Thanks for the read, I will tweet your post and come back occasionally.
It is the thought of the bloggers that must be understood, what he/she wanted to convey, and the feelings he/she wanted to express in the form of blog,cause blog as we know it is an expression of oneself…But definitely if you want English speaking people to understand you try to learn the English language if they are your target reader..
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Hi Nile,
Translation programs only translate words which can give our sentence a different meaning. So you're right, we have to proof the output always. I usually use thesaurus to find an exact word that can convey my message in my post. 🙂
Same here ! As english not being my first language i face these situations when i get corrections on my blog posts.Thanks a ton Nile i could improve myself and make less mistakes.and yeah "Practice makes Man Perfect"..Very well written post…Excuse the grammar though..lol kiddin 😛
Great post.I have enjoyed it very much.I hope such post more and more.Thanks to author.
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I think practice makes perfect. I always like when people correct me because I can learn from it.
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Actually I'm having a problem with blogs that has different language specially when it has no translations. There are great articles also in different language, problem is, if you translate it, it ruins the grammar and the sense of the post.
Well, I would advise them to read as much as possible in English. Nobody requires a full Native English language on the Internet, but if the author spends some time on writing some correct phrases, instead of writing 400 words in 5 minutes (400 unreadable words), my take is that he will become very much appreciated.
I take my hat off to people who blog and English is not their first language. Imagine trying blog in Russian or some other language when you have never spoken it .
Guilty.
I was shamed recently when I visited the blog of a 12 year old Asian boy – glosonblog.com if I recall. And he had written an article specifically about the common mistakes made in English grammar with examples on the correct use of 'who versus whom' etc – most of which still went over my head. 🙁
However reading back what you've written out loud is a good way to proof an article. If it doesn't sound right spoken it's inlikely to read well.
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Creating a blog needs knowledge on the blog as far as its meaning and analysis of the visited URL is concerned.
I'm afraid I strongly disagree with you when it comes to using Translation tools. I read, write and use two languages and I must say that it's always better that you try to think on the language you are about to write than to use translation of the text you have already written.
People think in languages, the forms, phrases and word choice are chosen as tools to formulate your thoughts. Translation is always tricky and professionals should do it. Therefore, I would even suggest hiring a native speaker to proofread your texts if you are not sure.
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You’re completely right Nile, even if we make some minor grammatical errors the meaning will turn out just the opposite. English language is a global language and is categorized into American and British English so bloggers have to keep this difference in mind because it may create confusion to a reader.
First i thank you for this. Definitely Language barriers are very serious for many blogger. Visitors and also search engines love that contents that are free from spelling mistake and any grammatically error. In today’s online world, you should have English proficiency in both writing and speaking.
Its true Nile. Guest blogging has been a good method of backlinking strategy. I don’t see any harm in it if the post is well written, valuable to the reader and guest author is ready to extend relationship with readers. You’ve very rightly raised the spun article problem. You should not allow it until carefully reading the post
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