[Sugar-devel] Lists in foreign languages (was Port Gtk 3 (Chat.activity))

[Aleksey Lim]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 01:20:40PM +1000, forster at ozonline.com.au wrote:
> > Another thing that I'd like to mention is the language. This list is
> > in English, and it would be good if we can respect that. I wouldn't
> > like to start reading emails in German or Chineese (I don't have any
> > problem with those languages, but I don't understand a word :P )
> 
> Thanks for raising this Manuel
> 
> Though I am almost monolingual in English, I still support the idea of list posts being in the language that the writer is most confident. Some may not have the confidence to write in a list's main language or to check that the Google Translate makes sense. Their contribution still is very important.
> 
> I googled it and found:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines#Use_the_common_language
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/editplus/message/5510
> 
> The first supports the main language, the discussion in the second supports both a main language and foreign language.
> 
> I would encourage those posting in a foreign language to include a Google Translate in the main language. I am not sure though, which should come first.

Generally speaking, sugar-devel@ might be treated as a pure technical
channel and posting in non-en can considered in the same way as adding
comments to the source code (the most common practices is that people
must not comment/name-variables in non-en). But I guess sugar-devel@ is
not such thing (maybe original list on @laptop.org was, but current
sugar-devel@ is not).

And I agree that having one common resource (for more technical
discussions than on ieap@) is more important than keeping it clear from
non-main-lang posts. In any case, having suggested main language
should be pretty enough (if people can post in main language, they do).

Besides, I'm sure that creating more rules for humans is less useful way
than let technology do underneath work to avoid having human rules,
except most natural ones that don't need any explicit publishing.
In other words, if there are no many non-en posts, it is np for
writers/readers to use aside translation tools. Otherwise, it is the
right moment to start thinking how technology can solve this issue,
e.g., patch ML software to auto add translation link to any
non-main-lang posts, or, [at the en] add Web UI for ML (e.g., google
groups have a checkbox to translate posts to your language).

-- 
Aleksey