Language Communities and Translation Communities

Question

I was unsure if I should ask this here or on meta, but here seems to fit better.

I've been in some of the Stack Exchange's Language Communities, and saw that many questions are being asked in English and not on the community's supposed language, which is understandable because I might wanna know the meaning of a phrase or a saying in that language, but I do not necessarily speak it, so I ask it in English.

The thing is, what about the opposite?

For example on the new Portuguese Language Community, I can ask for a translation of a saying in: English > Portuguese, but what about Portuguese > English?

Should we be asking it on these communities (which I personally think it won't fit) or do we have to open a proposal to create a new "Translation Community" just for this porpuse/type of situation?

Answer 1

Despite their outward appearance, our Language sites are still predominantly English-language sites. There's a strong component of "learning the language" and the entire interface and support material is in English. Full immersion is the best way to learn a language, so posts are simply conducted in the subject's language wherever possible.

Of course, we're not checking credentials at the door, so if a native-only speaker wishes to participate, they are more than welcomed. They may have a bit of trouble getting around the site or knowing what the features do, but we are not currently translating the interface into non-English languages (except for a few Stack Overflow sites). That means, essentially, that we are not currently accepting proposals for non-English community (as in your example) like "Translation Communities".

See the State of Internationalization for details.