Saturday, January 30, 2010

Warning to Blog authors and commenters: Comments written in Chinese characters

I've just received another one of these this morning, the fourth one I've had. It may be genuine because it also contains a complimentary phrase in English. However, I did not publish the others and won't be publishing this one. The reason is as follows:

On receipt of the first such comment, I didn't publish it simply because I could not understand it and it made me suspicious. Then a few weeks ago Fr Mildew did publish one of these Chinese comments. One of his commenters investigated the content via one of the internet translation sites and found it to be an advert for a pornography site. Of course Father removed it straight away.

So, if you're a blog owner, it's safer not to publish comments in Chinese, even if , as in my most recent case, there is a pleasant English remark, which could be just a ruse to get you to publsih.. My advice is, unless you know what the Chinese is saying, DON'T PUBLISH

If you're a genuine commenter who understands and writes Chinese, don't include any Chinese characters when commenting on English blogs. I for one will not publish you if you do.

I don't know how widespread this problem is, but thought it worth posting about. We don't want a situation in which it's known in China, that pornographic adverts can be found on our English speaking Catholic blogs.

There won't be time to post again until this evening. Will do my best then to get back to normal after the dubious excitements of the past few days!!

5 comments:

Catholic Conclave said...

Google can translate- then it becomes all too clear if they are genuine

Jane said...

Gillibrand: Thanks for your helpful comment.

Annie said...

I've had a load of these coming in to A&B over the last few months, I just delete the lot without even opening them.

one grateful heart said...

Thanks, Jane for the warning. I was surprised to get one Chinese comment in the past week and went to Google translate to find out what it said.
It was OK, but not pertinent to the blog post. I wonder if they send out one inoffensive comment to see if it will be published without translation and, if it is, then target that site for many more "comments".

Pastor in Monte said...

Yup: I've had plenty, too.
I've tested them with Google translator: mine have all been Japanese, not Chinese.