Chile Forum

http://www.calidadturistica.cl/

spotted this one in the airport in osorno this morning on a sign saying to prefer quality certified tourist providers.....

its pretty obvious what the first failer is.........

A) sign was not in english,

b), the website is not in english......

Complete waste of a program really?

While I would tend to agree that being in English would be beneficial for most visitors of European descent , many of the visitors to Chile are native Spanish speakers; perhaps that is the target market they are after. Also when supplying a website in English people assume that any contact they make through such a site will be responded to in English, that may not be the case here.

Just my .02

rploaded wrote:While I would tend to agree that being in English would be beneficial for most visitors of European descent , many of the visitors to Chile are native Spanish speakers; perhaps that is the target market they are after. Also when supplying a website in English people assume that any contact they make through such a site will be responded to in English, that may not be the case here.

Just my .02

perhaps i was wrong

let me re phrase it, a website targeted at tourists...

Should be in english, German, and Portuguese being that those are the main languages of people visiting chile.....

the purpose of the website is to advise tourists of safe tourist providers? but only if you can speak Spanish, so english speaking people can continue with the un safe providors, is chile not setup to handel english speaking tourists ?

p.s just as bad as the companies who sponsor and support the chile hablar english program... yet when you call there call centres and ask for someone who speaks english they dont have any..... (vtr for example)

zer0nz wrote:Should be in english, German, and Portuguese being that those are the main languages of people visiting chile.....

Now that statement I can agree with! If you are going to make a site regarding tourism it should be in as many languages as you can possibly support via the web. Then you should have a call center with one person capable of speaking your major languages. Again all of these things take money and apparently the people trying to get the tourism train going are Spanish speakers.

Perhaps someone should contact the webmaster and offer to provide this language conversion. If my Spanish was of that caliber I sure would.

rploaded wrote:

Should be in english, German, and Portuguese being that those are the main languages of people visiting chile.....[/quote]

Now that statement I can agree with! If you are going to make a site regarding tourism it should be in as many languages as you can possibly support via the web. Then you should have a call center with one person capable of speaking your major languages. Again all of these things take money and apparently the people trying to get the tourism train going are Spanish speakers.

Perhaps someone should contact the webmaster and offer to provide this language conversion. If my Spanish was of that caliber I sure would.[/quote]


the point im making is another "half arse" attempt by chile to do something, its a great idea, good concept, the site isnt that bad of a layout, its just they failed to make it multi language................ one of the most important steps?

I understand your point, so I took the time to email them this as a suggestion through their general contact. Hopefully they will implement it in the future. Yes I agree it should have been this way also, but even the US GOV official tourism site is not multi language only English or Spanish. Not that the US does anything right, but I did notice they will answer questions sent via either English or Spanish via the web. Perhaps this is a niche market, become the one an only multi language Chile travel resource page. Lots of work but could be rewarding financially for the right person.

There is a new law requiring all tourist related businesses to register with sernatur.

years ago we met with them, and essentially offered them allsouthernchile.com on a silver plater in English. All they had to do was provide us with the contact information of the companies registered with them and what they provided so we could publish.

We were told by the reps of the last government that they could not discriminate, bla, bla, bla (read we do not want to loose the votes of all the crappy little tourism biz, because that would mean all of them).

While it is true that it would be good to have any tourist information in other languages, the highest numbers for visitors is definitely Spanish speakers followed by Portuguese speakers. Comparatively few visitors are native English speakers. I can see the advantage of having English as the alternative seeing as it is becoming more universally used, however. Though most websites here are translated so badly that it might or might not be a good idea.

Donnybrook wrote:While it is true that it would be good to have any tourist information in other languages, the highest numbers for visitors is definitely Spanish speakers followed by Portuguese speakers. Comparatively few visitors are native English speakers. I can see the advantage of having English as the alternative seeing as it is becoming more universally used, however. Though most websites here are translated so badly that it might or might not be a good idea.

chile.travel... rummor has it is run by gringos, hense why it is so well done....., im not surprised this one isnt as well!, or perhaps down the line it will be?

Donnybrook wrote:Though most websites here are translated so badly that it might or might not be a good idea.

I visited a small village in India several years back that had a sign with about 5 languages on it. The english one said " Reading this sign may cause death" It should have said " Not reading this sign may cause injury" It was in front of a rock slide area and it was listing various warnings.

It was one of my most favorite signs I have encountered whilst traveling.

Sorry got a bit off topic with that.

Donnybrook wrote:While it is true that it would be good to have any tourist information in other languages, the highest numbers for visitors is definitely Spanish speakers followed by Portuguese speakers. Comparatively few visitors are native English speakers.

Depends where you go. In the case of PN Torres del Paine, more than half of the visitors are considered to be non-native-Spanish-speaking, and close to half are either first- or second-language English speakers. That means you don't count the kids with Spanish 101 from Hoboken as competent Spanish speakers. The private guides tend to speak English, the CONAF people less so. Very few locals speak Brazilian Portuguese and don't need to, since Brazilian tourists typically get along in either Spanish and/or English.

The various agencies of the Chilean government don't seem to have a coherent approach to translation, but then neither do agencies in the US, which by now has to be one of the largest Spanish-speaking countries in the hemisphere. There was a laughable attempt not long ago in Puerto Natales where the government enlisted a European non-native speaker to translate some tourism related publications into English, even though the town has plenty of native English speakers and even translators to chose from. The results are predictable and you sometimes think the government deliberately wants a poor and even laughable outcome. It makes the government look like cheapskate amateurs in everything they do. Which is probably an accurate assessment. It's a Toy Country that hates to do anything well or professionally - so we just get used to it and consider it part of the entertainment landscape.

rploaded wrote:

I visited a small village in India several years back that had a sign with about 5 languages on it. The english one said " Reading this sign may cause death" It should have said " Not reading this sign may cause injury"

It's a target-rich environment