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Posting in other languages, please be friendly but clear

The subject must be as old Santa, but there still seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on the subject:

Every now and then people post in other languages than English, like this one. I tend to leave a (IMO rather friendly) comment, saying:
"Please see this https://meta.askubuntu.com/a/3616/72216 - questions should be asked and responded to in english. Thank-you."

This is not a political statement, not a value label, just a reminder of the practical agreement we have that this site is in English.

Also every now and then, I get a grumpy comment suggesting (like in the example) That I should rather translate the post. The comment is even upvoted.(?)
Please don't leave a comment suggesting so, it gives people the wrong impression that we are running a translation service here.
We do not ask people to write a poem in English, and most of us are willing to do some editing if the language is a bit of a problem but the question is clear.

But again:
Don't suggest we should translate a question, and publically suggest it is "unfriendly" to ask people to post in English.

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    I agree although I sometimes too try to translate Spanish/French/German posts to English, but always with leaving a comment that the OP has to use English here at least for his/her next post.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Feb 22, 2015 at 11:36
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    @ByteCommander I think that is perfectly allright, than you make clear it is not what we should do.
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Commented Feb 22, 2015 at 11:38

3 Answers 3

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Posting a question in English (outside of being policy) is the best way to get the maximum number of eyeballs on a problem and increases the odds of a solution. I'm baffled as to why anyone would think that request unfriendly. I've made attempts with translation services in the past but considering the results I should have just left a comment suggesting conversion to english and perhaps flagged unclear what you are asking....

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Why not leave such posts as they look like?

Those one who have big right gold opinion will down vote. Others will ignore or translate manually.

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I would put that as a feature-request then. Normally I would control paste the text into google translate and fix the context. But if theres a way to put it into SE without doing it automatically I would support it.

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    When I started participating on AU, I used to suggest to use Google translate. However, If you look into the history of the question, you can see what happens then. It creates a dragon of a translation, and still needs a lot of editing (which I did in this case by the way). Usually, a story by OP in his or her own words does the job better, even if the skills on English are limited. I'd rather read a authentic question than a weirdly translated one.
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Commented Feb 22, 2015 at 18:39
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    @JacobVlijm - When I have to do it I edit in the (google) translated version and a comment that I use online translation, and leave the original (in a blockquote), so anyone who can speak the language can read it and do a proper translation without having to look in the revision history.
    – Wilf
    Commented Feb 22, 2015 at 22:07
  • @JacobVlijm "a dragon of a translation" = "een draak van een vertaling" :)
    – don.joey
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 12:54
  • @don.joey I was wondering if it would work in English :).
    – Jacob Vlijm
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 12:59
  • Automated translation services are not always totally accurate. Unless you have a good grasp of the language that you're translating, then I'd say it's probably better to just leave the question to someone else - ideally, the OP.
    – Carl H
    Commented Mar 25, 2015 at 19:11

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