up vote 66 down vote favorite
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There are so many proposals entitled: Stack Overflow (in language x).

My question is - are these proposals actually viable?

For example, if these sites reach beta, will the SE team implement a completely separate site for them?

e.g. http://stackoverflow.fr (for french), http://stackoverflow.de (for german).

Or will they have a similar take to this question. - For example, if you post a question with the german filter on (de.stackoverflow.com) - metadata is added to that question to say that it is in german, and then that question will only appear on de.stackoverflow.com - but all the sites use the same users and everything else as stackoverflow.com?

If these sites are going to be implemented, how will they be implemented?

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I also wonder the answer for your last question a lot. You didn't mention it in the question but I think you separate the other non-English sites from the scope of the question and consider only the code-related proposals. Because it is OK to have non-English sites as discussed in meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/52331/… and discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/2571/… – petrichor Jan 7 '12 at 13:42
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@İsmailArı so I should rename the quesiton "How will non-english sites be implemented"? – Alex Coplan Jan 7 '12 at 13:52
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I think the name is nice. I just wanted to add the links to the related discussions. I don't know any non-English site launched by SX Inc and I really wonder what they think about the format and the process. – petrichor Jan 7 '12 at 17:27
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@İsmailArı German Language and Usage is in public beta phase. – kiamlaluno Jan 10 '12 at 2:39
@kiamlaluno Thanks, I didn't know that. It seems to be a good example for bilingual SX site. – petrichor Jan 10 '12 at 10:05
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It will be viable when: 1-) They make it possible to translate the user interface of the localized version of Stack Overflow and 2-) When they ease on the requirements for getting a proposal to beta stage. Currently it is nearly impossible to get a localized version of any StackExchange site because you can't gather enough people with the required reputation - They have no reputation (and most likely will never earn any) because they don't participate on SO and that is because THEY CAN'T UNDERSTAND ENGLISH, which is why all of these proposals were created in the first place. – Caio Proiete Jan 22 '12 at 18:38
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I'm sure there are foreign language programming languages, but I really hope anyone programming in any major language would be more than capable of navigating the basic nav structure of stack overflow. Programming is so English-centric (and I find it hard to call that a bad thing, since it fosters communication!) I doubt any non-English version would be particularly helpful, it would just segregate other language programmers away from the good answerers on SO. – Ben Brocka Feb 26 '12 at 17:48
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@Ben Brocka I agree with you except that people who don't understand English is already segregated from SO. You probably don't live in a country where a big portion of programmers don't understand English. – bigown Jul 13 '12 at 14:53
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Small point: The stackoverflow.fr pattern doesn't work, as the 2-letter TLDs are named after countries, not languages. And we want a "Stackoverflow in French," not "Stackoverflow for France". The distinction is more obvious for any languages that don't have a corresponding country name (Hindi, for example). fr.stackoverflow.com would make much more sense. (To say nothing of the problems registering stackoverflow.* at a bunch of unrelated registrars.) – Flimzy Jul 18 '12 at 23:03

6 Answers

up vote 80 down vote accepted

First of all, English is not my native language and I'm not a big fan of using it. Even given that I'd say those proposals are doomed - they have no chance of creating a site as useful as original StackOverflow.

There're two reasons why I think so. The first reason is: if the site is not in English you lose most of the current top users. The second reason is those site will dilute effort. I speak English and Russian - I would now have to participate in two sites and answer the same questions twice.

And finally it is not really necessary, because currently you can't be a qualified developer unless you can write and read in English at at least some intermediate level - it is just impossible, because most of the blogs, documentation and new books are in English.

This is why I firmly believe that currently StackOverflow in any language except English is destined to languish in poverty - it will have little traffic and be mostly useless.

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Actually I agree with you in most points, but you probably not consider that some languages are spread far enough to build a solid base of documents(blogs,tutorials,..). For example there is a german version of the Microsoft Developer Network, so someone from a german speaking region can actually become a developer without knowing much more english than the coding languages english keywords. – SwissCoder Feb 11 '12 at 15:50
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@SwissCoder: I can't evaluate the German version of MSDN, but I've seen the Russian one and it's horrible - the translations are done formally and are often just misleading so I'm much better off just reading the English version than try to deduce what the translator meant. – sharptooth Feb 17 '12 at 7:48
No, at the german MSDN site, they don't do that. Sure some resources get translated automatically, which are not realy readable many times. The difference is, they do let people translate many pages. And they even have German people writing own articles about the technologies, so you get good resources there. – SwissCoder Feb 17 '12 at 16:24
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Very true, if you don't know English, you can't be a software developer. Period. – markus Feb 26 '12 at 23:49
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English is not the center of world. Of course anyone can be a great software developer without know english. – Rafael Jul 13 '12 at 2:23
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It's a lot of arrogance and prejudice stating that you can't be a developer if you don't understand English. Most developers I know don't understand English and they are the main target to a native language SO. They can be poor developers, sure, and they need to improve their knowledge. Why just English speakers can be developers? It's a blind attitude. – bigown Jul 13 '12 at 15:04
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And I'd like to add that just because some country originated a technology, that doesn't mean everyone else must be constrained to working with it in that country's language. A common ground might be necessary (think lawyers and latin), but it's unfeasible to force everyone to learn that language before working in the field. That would raise the barrier of entry a lot, no sane country would accept that, especially if the main "benefit" of doing so would be to contribute better with the country that already has a huge head start... – mgibsonbr Jul 15 '12 at 3:33
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I've worked in software shops where almost none of the devs speak english, but coincidental or not, they don't participate in devs communities also. So I agree that, even when english is not needed to be software dev, these communities don't have much chance. – Eduardo Molteni Jul 23 '12 at 14:40
+1 totally agree. – Stephane Rolland Nov 9 '12 at 15:11
up vote 34 down vote

They're as viable as any other proposal in Area 51, and just like any other Area 51 proposal, if the proposal has sufficient support from a community, it will get created.

It's a bit premature to discuss the specifics of a hypothetical site, but the thinking right now is that language-specific sites will NOT be created as a filtered version of — in this case — Stack Overflow. They will be created as independent communities with their own subdomain, their own users, their own tags, their own meta, their own moderators — in short, their own community with their own norms.

Beyond that, the actual implementation details will be for the dev team to decide as they work out the localization issues.

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Did you intentionally use "subdomain" here? i.e, you're intending to create programmation.stackexchange.com rather than stackoverflow.fr as the OP specified? – Kevin Vermeer Jan 9 '12 at 20:38
@Kevin Yes, "subdomain" is intentional. Currently sites are named as subject.stackexchange.com. Sites do not receive their own domain name but typically are a subdomain under "stackexchange.com." There are no immediate plans to follow a different naming convention for international sites. But that can all change, once a site is launched. It's still a bit too soon to speculate definitively. – Robert Cartaino♦ Jan 9 '12 at 23:52
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@RobertCartaino instead of allowing Secession to happen, what about user-improvable translations of SO? – Tobias Kienzler Jan 11 '12 at 12:05
up vote 3 down vote

I believe that country and/or language specific sites are indeed viable, not as much because of contents (I agree English is the lingua franca of software development, and refusing to learn it is stupid) but mainly because of culture.

A community is defined not only be its objective properties (ex. what subjects are on/off topic) but by subjective ones as well (ex. how strictly you have to stay on topic, how much duplicate questions are tolatetad, how personal/impersonal the questions can be, etc). Two or more groups of people may have similar goals (ex. develop software) but wildly different means of collaborating with each other to seek those goals.

I believe this Wikipedia article about Low Context Culture vs High Context Culture might be relevant to illustrate my point. Certain behaviors that feel "natural" for a high context individual can be seen as "annoying" or "disruptive" by a low context one. Conversely, normal behaviors by the latter are seen as "cold" and "unhelpful" by the former. A site with similar objectives but different culture may cater more to large niches of people who otherwise would have trouble "fitting in" a different one.

At last, I'd like to point out that just because someone has knowledge of a foreign language it doesn't mean s/he has the fluency and vocabulary to be productive in that language: I often find myself wanting to know about a subject, and while I know precisely the concept I'm interested on I can't translate it to the right English words to google it. Trying to ask other people is equally clumsy, and when I'm finally able to explain myself the retort is usually like: "oh, so you mean X?" ...and I realize that searching for X would have given me what I wanted in the first hit. This situation is embarassing for me, wastes other people's time, and is much more prevalent than a native English speaker might think it'd be.

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up vote 2 down vote

  1. I am indian i know hindi but its pretty tough to write hindi

  2. All good it/computer books and resource are in english than if one can read english where is problem in writing english

  3. I dont know any programming languages which uses hindi.

  4. if we keep stackvoerflow in one languages it will be more helpful since there are more user who know english i think 10x so getting proper help would be easy than a hindi stackoverflow site

also i would say same about all other language x stackoverflow proposal site

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up vote 0 down vote

It is possible to edit questions on stackoverflow. I would believe that if someone who does not know english, if they post the question in russian/spanish or any other language, there would be enough bilingual people there to edit and translate the question to english. Same for answers, someone could answer in english and someone else could take the time to translate the answer back to the OPs language. Although it sounds like more work, it will prevent fragmenting, and since the edits give points, the incentive is always there.

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That might work if the questions were for instance tagged in the target language and filtered out for everyone who doesn't understand it. Otherwise, it would create much noise and make the site unusable (imagine opening the "newest questions" tab and seeing several questions you don't understand, having to paginate several times to find the ones you're interested on). – mgibsonbr Jul 15 '12 at 3:15
up vote 0 down vote

I think I am a huge fan of different Stackoverflows in different languages, because some people are not that great in English and should be able to use their native language to ask their question to get better in programming.

Although I think this is a great opportunity for them to learn programming, I think we should keep all the great questions and answers in one central place, the English Stackoverflow. Why? Because what if a Dutch guy is asking the master of all questions? Only the Dutch people will be able to read the answer. I think our knowledge should be shared with every programmer so everyone can get better, instead of only the Dutch programmers.

FYI. I am a Dutch guy, so I am not saying this because I don't understand the language, I am saying this because I am Dutch and I think we should not get a different SO for every other language we can think off. Just so we can share our knowledge with everybody instead of only the people of our own country, we have forums like that enough already. I have seen some great questions/answers by English people, guys from India, Turkey or Germany. From everywhere. When we all get on separate websites, we will not be able to read/share our awesome knowledge anymore! We won't be able to Google the answer to our question if it is posted in another Stackoverflow, We won't be able to follow the discussion of a topic and we can not reply if we do know the answer!

I agree with every word said by Sharptooth.

Long story short: do NOT get separate Stackoverflows for every language, and thus keeping everything on Stackoverflow (english).

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