Accepted languages on this forum?

Site Feedback
#1

Recently a question was asked in Spanish.
IIRC, this was accepted on the mailing list. Is this differently here?

Do we want to enforce English as the single allowed language in this forum?

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if people could ask their questions in whatever language they prefer. Of course, that might mean that these questions might reach a different (probably smaller) audience. (But there are services like Google translate.)
Obviously, the possible audience is probably largest if the question was asked in English. But does that mean we should exclude people who don’t speak that language (or who prefer to write in a different one)?

#2

You may open a non-English sub-topic including all languages but English.

#3

A “rule” to only stick to English does not exist, at least we haven’t agreed on. Sorry if it sounded like this and a new topic for the next developer meeting.

With the very same argument it can be asked to at least try to formulate the question in (bad) English :innocent: I am no native English speaker either, speak a little Spanish and like that language :slightly_smiling_face:

I mostly see a problem of not finding/understanding answers and resulting duplications.

@HKPhysicist maybe this works. Do you have an example of this approach?

#4

Sorry. I didn’t intend to be rude (and I hope it didn’t come across like this). I just wanted to write that question down while I still remembered.

Just to add to the arguments: A question posed in native language might still be easier to understand than a question in bad (maybe incomprehensible) English.

I also like the idea of having a category for non-English topics.

#5

You know. In 21st century, English is the official language of United Nation and European Union.

Octave as a mathematical software, setting a common language for its interface and discussion is very natural.

Besides, non-English speakers may also want to discuss in their own languages. Non-English sub-topics fit their needs. Many technical forums do have Japanese or Chinese sub topics.

#6

At least the European Union is very thorough to emphasis that all of the 24 (!) official languages are equally accepted working languages. Afaict, all official documents have to be available in all of these languages. (Some of those are “procedural languages” which have a somewhat higher state.)
That’s not what Octave needs to aspire to. Just wanted to make the point that the EU is probably not the best example to make your point here.
I don’t know how the United Nations handles different languages though. But I would be surprised if speech in a different language than English was forbidden.

Octave’s GUI is available in different languages.
Most (or all?) of the documentation is in English though.
But reading in a foreign language requires less proficiency than writing in that language IMHO…

Suma de matrices con Recursión
#7

After reading some threads on this topic, I changed some of my thoughts:

  1. Enforcing a language is no good practice.
    • This is a help forum, desperate user becomes more desperate with language problems.
  2. Creation of a bunch of categories for individual langues is no good practice.
    • Splitting up the community in sub-categories prevents from talking with each other.

My idea is to tag a non-English topic, so we can see how high the demand for a particular language is and speakers of that languages have something to filter topics to their needs.

A good overview of thoughts are given in other Discourse forums, that already went through this stage of evolution:

1 Like
#8

Using tags sounds reasonable.

Is there a way a normal user can add new tags? I just tried to add a now topic with the tag “Italian” (which I don’t speak - just for trial…). But it didn’t allow me to use that tag.

Should users just ask their question in their preferred language and you will continue to add new language tags as it goes?

(Btw: I’m not sure this is possible with the tag system. But “Spanish” should begin with a capital “S” afaik.)

#9

Thanks for the hint. Now everybody can create tags, but they are case insensitive in Discourse.

I think that is the way to go, but hopefully others are able to tag topics, as well :innocent: