Myself a non-native speaker of English, I fully agree that diskussions
on en WP should be held in English. However, IMO the policy should not
be that posting in other languages than English would be "not allowed
or sternly frowned upon". Rather, efforts to write in English should
be encouraged. I.e., don't say "don't write in foreign languages". Say
"explain what you mean in english, and if you quote sources in other
languages please translate. If you find doing so difficult, please
try and find someone who can translate for you" and then gently point
them to the relevant Babel user category as a means to find people to
ask.
I have myself recently translated a quotation in Swedish, used to
support a point of view, on an article talk page. I can happily do so
again, if someone thinks (s)he has a good source to support his/her
opinion but is not brave or confident enough to translate it to
English - and finds the matter important enough to take the trouble to
go ahead and ask me. If it was not important enough to take the
trouble, then (s)he needn't post it.
I hope, though, that I can write a short sentence,like "hi, cool to
see you active at the English version as well" in Swedish on a user
talk page without offending anyone. (I did once, and got a comment
from him that people might not like it.)
/~~~~
On 6/13/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
If anything at all needs to
be done, I'd suggest that someone leave a polite reminder that this is
the English Wikipedia, most english-first-languagers are notoriously
monolingual, and that the peanut gallery would really like a
translation. :)
Even of those us who didn't learn English as a first language would
appreciate a translation, unless it happens to be in our first language,
which in my case (modern Greek) it almost never is.
-Mark
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