Why not just add localization to the existing site?

Question

I think the SO team should add localization to the main http://stackoverflow.com website, whereby if a browsers locale is set to es and the user posts a question, it will get submitted to the database with the es locale (maybe some quick lookup to an online translator to verify that the language matches the browser locale).

English questions are submitted with en by default and are displayed on browsers with the en locale.

By default, only questions/answers with the locale flag that matches a users browser will be displayed to that user, and their could be a button that says this question is available in another language.

In the user options, one should also be able to set additional locale flags to display questions in any language they wish as long as they're logged in.

Lastly, there should also be the ability to "translate" questions into multiple locals, and earn rep &/ badges for doing so.

Proposal: Stack Ovserflow in Spanish

Answer 1

Displaying only the questions with the same locale than the browser is definitively a bad idea. Why should I see only questions in Spanish when I'm not logged on? It would only be a hurdle.

Also, I think that it's a bad idea to merge all them in the main site. We are trying to create a comunity of experts. It's hard to create a comunity with such a divisive line. It's also likely than these communities will slightly differ in what the consider good or on-topic questions and answer over time (it already happens up to a point in stackoverflow in subcomunities in different tags, it would be even worse with different languages).

Answer 2

I think if any localization mechanism is implemented on stackoverflow or other stack exchange sites, it should have the main purpose of facilitating the communication and sharing of information, instead of segregating users which may not even had the chance to choose the language of the operating system they got installed at work.