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discuss Does being multilingual make a difference in domaining?

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Are you multilingual? What languages do you speak?

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  • Chinese

  • Spanish

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  • French

  • Japanese

  • Korean

  • Arabic

  • Farsi

  • Portugese

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wallet2it

@NFTx.cc @xNFT.xyz. Tesla Inc loverTop Member
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Dear all,

I just want to open discussion on the topic, " Does being multilingual make a difference in domaining"?

I personally know more than five languages.
What are your experiences in both negotiating a sale or obtaining a deal using their native languages?

Poll is also available above. It would be an interesting statistics to study.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
It depends. I would say only if you have a mastery in the languages.

Otherwise, if you only know a bit it can actually be damaging when you don't really understand the linguistics.

What might seem like a good term initially could turn out to be the wrong tense, context, or terminology.

I think this is the type of thing that gets a lot of people who speak English as a second language in trouble with domain investing.

As far as negotiation itself, it could probably help.

Brad
 
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It depends. I would say only if you have a mastery in the languages.

Otherwise, if you only know a bit it can actually be damaging when you don't really understand the linguistics.

What might seem like a good term initially could turn out to be the wrong tense, context, or terminology.

I think this is the type of thing that gets a lot of people who speak English as a second language in trouble with domain investing.

As far as negotiation itself, it could probably help.

Brad
What if the potential buyer is from Russia and doesn't speak English?
 
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What if the potential buyer is from Russia and doesn't speak English?

I am talking from a domain investing standpoint.

Obviously communication wise it could help, again if you have a mastery of the language.

Though nowadays you could basically just tell the buyer that you don't speak the language and use Google translate. It might not be perfect, but it gets the job done.

I have been dealing in domains for a long time and can normally bridge a communication gap with modern tools and/or connections.

Brad
 
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I am talking from a domain investing standpoint.

Obviously communication wise it could help, again if you have a mastery of the language.

Though nowadays you could basically just tell the buyer that you don't speak the language and use Google translate. It might not be perfect, but it gets the job done.

I have been dealing in domains for a long time and can normally bridge a communication gap with modern tools and/or connections.

Brad
Great insight. Domain investing is global. I think it would be interesting to see what's the most spoken languages in NamePros. It might not be so obvious as we would think.
 
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More languages is always better for domaining, which is a global business. Looking back on my college days, I wish I had been wiser... they offered a non-compulsory course of Latin, the mother of all Romance languages. But I was lazy ;-(). However, now I speak 3 languages and slowly learning the 4th! It already helped a lot in all aspects. Including domain selection and sales...
 
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More languages is always better for domaining, which is a global business. Looking back on my college days, I wish I had been wiser... they offered a non-compulsory course of Latin, the mother of all Romance languages. But I was lazy ;-(). However, now I speak 3 languages and slowly learning the 4th! It already helped a lot in all aspects. Including domain selection and sales...
Yeah me too. I would have taken more classes or traveled more (But now pandemic no no)....English seems to be leading the way in the poll haha...Let's see
 
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I am a native English speaker although some would say it's my second language lol...I'm fluent in Bullsh1t. I have a reasonable understanding of both French and Spanish and this helps me when researching names to either buy or register. It gives me a foot in both camps as understanding English can give me an edge when looking at pure English names but also, I'm able to see either a French or Spanish word and more often than not I know if it makes sense in the literal sense, or indeed as a domain name. Sometimes, many French and Spanish names would have accents above the letters and although this may not make so much difference to most, it can have a completely different sound when said with the accents in the relevant language.

Also, as in English there can be similarly spelled words but they can have a whole different meaning. "Their friends are over there and they're with a dog."

Knowledge is key in most situations but never be afraid to ask if you're not sure.

Regards,

Reddstagg
 
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It is an interesting, and important, question. I, like @tonyk2000 , wish I had become proficient in more languages, and definitely feel those who are fluently multi-lingual have a definite advantage. Especially Spanish names seem to account for some big sales, although majority are English of course. I think the English dominance of domain names will slowly wane over future years.

In addition to the obvious advantages of knowing names in several languages, some brandable names are built on a name from another language.

Great topic and poll - thank you @wallet2it

Bob
 
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Speaking another language can make travel much more pleasant but in the case of selling Spanish domains is of little value when many people in Spanish speaking countries make a fraction of U.S. wages.
 
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Especially Spanish names seem to account for some big sales, although majority are English of course. I think the English dominance of domain names will slowly wane over future years.
... if not already. I'm not U.S. citizen or resident, but I heard that a lot of large businesses in U.S. already have "For English, press one. Para español, presione dos." in their customers service phone greetings... Maybe Americans should start learning Spanish as the 2nd language :)
 
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I'm confused enough with my own language but imagine being told as a 14 year old that a table was masculine and a table was feminine...no wonder I'm so confused today lol. I guess I'd also say I'd recognize the origins of some words from Latin and I could probably read basic Italian although I've never studied it.

On top of all that, we have to factor in that some words when combined make perfect sense but others when combined make little sense and sometimes a plural can be seen as a better combination with certain other words and just seems to work better than the singular version. I've seen guesstimated appraisals giving a higher value to a plural version but it doesn't apply to every case.

I'm sure there are languages from across our small world that are less complicated than we would imagine and when explained to us properly we would have a better understanding of their origins.

Hasta luego mon amies - mange tout, mange tout.

I wonder what the French word is for Entrepreneur?

Regards,

Reddstagg
 
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... if not already. I'm not U.S. citizen or resident, but I heard that a lot of large businesses in U.S. already have "For English, press one. Para español, presione dos." in their customers service phone greetings... Maybe Americans should start learning Spanish as the 2nd language :)

I think that Spanish has within the last few years overtaken English as the most widely spoken language in America. Please correct me if I am wrong but I didn't have any data available to hand.
 
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I think that Spanish has within the last few years overtaken English as the most widely spoken language in America. Please correct me if I am wrong but I didn't have any data available to hand.

Spanish is easily the second most popular language, but there is no chance English is not far and away the most popular.

English is the most common language spoken in the United States with approximately 239 million speakers. Spanish is spoken by approximately 35 million people.

English 78.1%, Spanish 13.5%, other Indo-European languages 3.7%, Asian and Pacific languages 3.6%, other languages 1.2% (2018 survey by the Census Bureau)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States
 
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Spanish is easily the second most popular language, but there is no chance English is not far and away the most popular.

English is the most common language spoken in the United States with approximately 239 million speakers. Spanish is spoken by approximately 35 million people.

English 78.1%, Spanish 13.5%, other Indo-European languages 3.7%, Asian and Pacific languages 3.6%, other languages 1.2% (2018 survey by the Census Bureau)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States

Thank you for making the correction. I should have kept my trap shut until I knew what I was talking about...that may take some time lol.
 
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In my experience it helps on the buying side. It's a good way to broaden your horizon. Especially if you want to pivot to ccTLDs. I speak 5 languages but still do a lot of research when I buy foreign language names as sometimes there can be very subtle nuances that you could get wrong if you don't use a language on a daily basis.

Also studied Greek and Latin in college but that seems like decades ago so I just remember the basics :)
 
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Where is hebrew? 😁

Anyway, I don't see it as an advantage in the domaining world because Google Translate became pretty accurate and the translations are slowly improving, and because of that, we can all write in all the languages.
 
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I think it's helpful. Sometimes people think, "Why on earth did that name sell?" and they don't realize it means something in a language other than English. Knowing more than one language can prevent people from having too narrow of a view (and it also helps with scanning through domain lists).

As Brad pointed out, it can also backfire if you don't understand things like grammar and context in the language. I speak/write Spanish, Portuguese, and German, in addition to English. At this point, my German's pretty rusty — but it still helps, and my first ever sale was a .DE.
 
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Where is hebrew? 😁

Anyway, I don't see it as an advantage in the domaining world because Google Translate became pretty accurate and the translations are slowly improving, and because of that, we can all write in all the languages.
Ugh sorry forgot to put it ....it can be in anything else
 
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I personally know more than five languages.
.

Congratulations, that is something to be proud of.

It is a plus in domaining & life in general.

How important is it? Not that important, because its mostly 2 words before the dot. I mean we're not writing essays.

If one doesn't speak English, they can easily learn it for domaining purposes. Its an easy language.

If you are investing in French, German etc phrases, or Arabic in English letters like HugeDomains are doing, then yes you gotta know the basics. Again though, domaining is mostly in English.

Millions if not billions non native English speakers get their university degrees in English, if people can do that, domaining should be easy:xf.wink:

Everybody speaks English.

imo
 
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It would be useful to know if domain names and branding are 'false friends'; in another language they have another meaning.
 
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The internet is in English if you translate to another language you then target those speaking countries which would pay less cpc for traffic than the English translation. So English all the way or lure your foreign traffic which you will want them clicking your English language links.
 
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I think the value of a domain name determines where and how widely that language is used rather than in which language. voice.com, for example, is incredibly valuable, but the same domain veuja.com in the Catalan language is almost worthless. I tried selling it here, it didn't even get an offer for $1. However, it would be very valuable if the same domain name was in French or German. In a sense, the power of the country in which it is spoken comes to the fore rather than the language itself.
 
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For negotiation Google translate is good enough, it is not perfect but it gets things moving.

For investing it is important to be fluent in English, other languages are not essential in domaining and in fact can be risky if you dont know the language very well, Google translate is not reliable at all in this case.
 
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it helps when someone scrolls through thousands of names from domaining point of view.
 
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