Proposal: Arabic Language
Would this proposal allow English questions about Arabic?
For example:
How could I tell whether تَنَاوَلْتُ is past I or present she?
All I have seen so far are peple talking about stopping free translation services.
Proposal: Arabic Language
Would this proposal allow English questions about Arabic?
For example:
How could I tell whether تَنَاوَلْتُ is past I or present she?
All I have seen so far are peple talking about stopping free translation services.
I am personally 70% against english questions about Arabic. English questions are fine to a point when asking questions similar to your example, which seem to be an easily answerable mistake, and easily explainable in English, but when these questions turn to attempts to comprehend deeper Arabic grammar with grammar of other languages seems to simply turn into a mess. Those that ask these questions should (and may Allah forgive me if I am wrong to expect this) be able to ask their questions in the plain language.
So to jump to the conclusion of what I want to say: I would say questions like the one in your example are fine, to satisfy the fact that we are a site for non-native learners, but we should definitely not allow total english questions in consideration that this site is going to also be fore native learners, linguists/scholars, and experts.
So what I am saying is: we should allow enough to satisfy/in consideration for the learners, but not so much to spoil the quality and benefit for the others.
I think the policy on most other language sites is to encourage questions in [language] and allow questions in English. Depending on the development of Arabic.SE, there may be many or few questions in English/Arabic, but as far as I know no site has had any problems in allowing in English, too, since many core community members are probably near-fluent in both languages.
As for other languages, it is certainly possible to answer a question in English, using either English or Arabic terminology. There are many people who study Arabic in English.
About "stopping free translation", on the language sites I frequent, a question is closed as "off-topic" if it's a pure translation request, basically of the form
What does this say?
[sentence]
without any indication of what the asker has done to try to answer this question him/herself. But a question like
I understand [this part] of [this sentence], but I'm not sure about the nuance of [this word] in this context. [More details]
is not really asking for a free translation, but for an explanation, which could be fine. I don't think allowing questions like these would do much harm. On the contrary, it may actually help to keep your site active and healthy, since many language sites are short on questions (most language sites have around 3 questions per day, allowing questions in English).
As long as the question concerns the Arabic language and as long as the fact that the question has been asked in English does not prevent it from receiving an intelligent answer, I don't see a reason why it should not be allowed to ask it in English.
You don't have to reinvent the wheel on this one. There are a large number of language sites on Stack Exchange. All of them have faced this question and come up with policies on it. You are not bound by their decisions, but you should be informed by them.