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Traditional localization typically entails offering one site, where the 'chrome' (or user interface elements, help text, prompts, etc) is available in multiple languages. As I looked into how other sites were offering support in multiple languages, this was the predominate way to do it. Many still have the 'countrycode.domain.com' available for search ...
18
It's a de-facto standard for language sites within Stack Exchange network, that they are bilingual and accept questions in both English and the language of the site (it's at least so with the sites I've visited).
It makes perfectly sense to ask questions in Latin. Of course those would be rather expert than beginner questions. But the advantage is, it ...
18
The thing is that Stack Exchange sites are generally defined by an audience and what they approve of/want to here. A good read would be the blog post on the Ubuntu/Linux ‘schism’ or the many answers Robert wrote addressing this problem.
When it comes to programming, if you know one language you often have an easy entry into another. You can read a question ...
15
The language sites I frequent (Japanese, German & Portuguese) are all tolerant with respect to beginners' questions. A simple question can still be a good question.
The format for good simple questions is often
Here is a sentence/text from [my textbook called X / this website (link) / etc.]. I understand [this part of it], but I'm not sure what [...
15
Possibly… but probably not in way you are implying.
I think calling a conventional programming syntax a "language" in the context of this subject space is playing a bit fast and loose with the metaphor. If you want to include anything that uses a type of syntax to communicate ideas, architectural diagrams would be on topic; so would algebraic systems,...
14
You can read a Spanish-translated version of Stack Overflow right now using Google Translate:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=es&u=https://stackoverflow.com/&usg=ALkJrhh3Q8mQ4mfVkq1m6cA94GzdNR7h5Q
But we are not going to embrace this as any ...
11
The problem is that all programming languages are constructed (yes, even Common Lisp), so basically anything about programming would be on-topic in this case, since all have to use a (constructed) language.
More concretely, I think that we should focus on languages intended for communication between humans (or sentients, at any rate), not a language for ...
10
I think it's hard(er) for proposals for sites in other languages to reach enough commitment, because only those people are active on Area51 that already are StackExchange users.
These users are already fine with using the sites in English.
Sure, as you can see, some of them would like to have an additional site in their native language, too. But I guess ...
10
I believe the main purpose isn't the language questions itself, but the language acquisition and learning techniques, tools and methods.
10
This proposal will not work, for several reasons. As mentioned by Ashish and magisch in the comments, it would take a huge amount of money to cover all conceivable languages spoken on Earth (including Klingon). You'd need to find a moderator for each language and pay him/her solely to moderate your chatroom (or full Stack Exchange site).
The original Stack ...
10
Well, since the question was updated (and other issues arose), I updated my answer.
First of all, I am not sure whether using Russian language in questions and answers at all is allowed by higher-level Stack Exchange rules/policies1 (you should understand, that not the whole Stack Exchange is community-driven; hosted sites are, but top-management also ...
9
Those are not SO-translations. Those are separate sites.
Restricting national versions of SO to national questions only makes exactly as much sense as restricting SO to England-related questions only.
9
Yes, please. This is a very good idea.
Sure, a question tagged samoan or greenlandic might not get much attention, but as long as there are enough people passing by to get rid of spam and poor quality content, this is not a problem. After all, we can already ask questions about obscure software on Super User or an obscure programming language on Stack ...
8
Latin’s mixed up with almost everything in Western civilization
Latin is important because it's intertwined with a lot of things historically, and even some things today. Latin was not simply the language of the Roman empire; it was Europe's international language of science, religion, law, administration, and scholarship from about 800 CE to 1800 CE.
Even ...
8
It would be unfortunate to preclude Dutch speakers in a Dutch Language proposal. On the contrary, studying a language has long been known to be best conducted in a full-immersion environment (i.e. in the target language only).
We've even considered (on the Stack Exchange Team) urging our language sites to become "full immersion." Its long been known that ...
8
Yo creo que sí es necesario, no todos los hispanos leemos bien el inglés, obviamente habrá algunos que sí, sin embargo, sus inquietudes y apreciaciones han sido descartadas de tajo por no saber el ingles, ahora bien si no entiendes lo que yo digo, entonces estarás en la misma posición de los hispanos que no saben inglés.
7
Yes.
For this example, it isn't so much the content of the example questions that is relevant, but making sure that the community is there.
My making people define, upvote questions, you ensure that you've got an engaged enough community to make a beta successful.
7
At http://english.stackexchange.com if you try to ask a question that is considered basic, it will be closed or you will get heaps of minuses. I am very careful when asking there.
People who do not know English well yet, need MORE help, not less. So, this site could even become much more popular.
7
Most existing language SEs concentrate about the language itself: the grammar and the corpus.
However (at least in my country) the languages are studied on philological faculties, and those include the literature and the cultural studies about the region in which the given language is native.
I see no problem in defining the scope of the proposal such ...
6
Here's the most recent thing I can find on Meta.SE on this perennial question. It's specific to books but the same principles apply.
Basically, the rule/practice seems to be, individual sites can choose to allow or forbid recommendation questions, but even if they allow them, each question must have a problem to be solved which provides enough context for ...
5
From a linguistic perspective, it would definitely make a lot of sense to group smaller languages into a single Q&A site based on their linguistic proximity.
None of the problems mentioned by @Jan pose any real issue when you move the heavy accent from culture, society, politics etc. over to purely linguistic aspects. That's why lumping language-related ...
5
The best way to find out is to try.
Sanskrit is 10 months old and Hindi is 5 months old, neither is doing really well.
Go ahead and Make the proposal
5
It seems that this idea would also be valuable for cryptocurrency stack exchanges, since there's so many stack exchanges for cryptocurrencies now. In your screenshot, we could have questions from Bitcoin SE, Etherium SE, BitcionCash SE, eois SE, etc.
Maybe we could also do something like this for science stack exchanges: Chemistry, Physics, Biology, etc. ...
4
If there is a lot of people interested in any country specific API questions these questions are definitely welcomed. There could be possibly another categories of language specific technologies in addition to the already mentioned.
However to intentionally restrict the whole scope to only these questions is not productive because it impoverishes the ...
4
As Robert has already covered, adding more diversity to the site user base is not a workable solution to the problem of having small audiences to start with.
The issue you raise about existing example questions on Area 51 not complying with what SO is seems like a legitimate concern to me. This probably stems from not enough true experts from existing SE ...
4
I think, they should be allowed. I see no reason to forbid them. Something, that is easy-too-google for native speaker, may be almost-impossible-to-google for novice learner (IMO, successful googling for things that are underrepresented over the Internet requires the language barrier to be already overcome at certain level).
I think that ideally there ...
4
Stack Exchange is an English language-based network. Every site uses English for all purposes, with the sole exceptions of
Stack Overflow in non-English languages: the sheer volume of non-English questions on Stack Overflow couldn't be dealt with, by simple removal. This was the solution.
Stack Exchange communities for non-Ebglish languages: these allow the ...
4
Yes, this would work.
Let's take an example of Engineering Stack Exchange which is a generic Engineering site accepting questions from all branches of Engineering. (There are some core branches of engineering e.g. Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Chemical etc.) and so on. It is still in beta for more that 5 years and working fine according to Area 51 states. ...
4
There is already a proposal for Dravidian and Sanskritic Languages in the definition stage and Telugu being a Dravidian language is on-topic there. You have already started following that proposal and just need to ask example questions there to help that site define.
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