How about Brazilian "caldo de sururu", which is missing on en.wiki (and also on pt.wiki)? It's surely a lack for pt.wiki, but maybe not for en.wiki,
Perhaps this is the fundamental difference in our views; because I consider that a lack on *any language Wikipedia* whether pt, en, de, fr etc....
On wikipedias, people doesn't look for other discussions (AfD) on the same article in another language before deleting an article for lack of notability. So you can expect that some valid unit of knowledge in one language is not surely (or automatic) valid in another.
This is not so much a problem to be looked at from the perspective of "oh their just not interested in X cultural articles", but from the perspective of how to convince editors to accept a less Y-centric viewpoint and include articles of relevance to X culture. This idea needs directing at en.wiki certainly, and probably at other language Wiki's too (because they also tend to have centric-attitudes needing to be overcome).
And English is not that 'global lingua franca'.
It is, though, the predominantly spoken language of *Wikimedia*, at the moment (and that is not likely to change soon). So as a transfer language it is often our best bet.
The point I was trying to make is that to get the material translated into *as many languages* as possible it needs a path of least resistance - whereby you have the maximum amount of translators available to process material. If English is no good as a "common" language from which to work on that then, fine, lets consider other options!
There is no ideal solution yet available where we can all use our own languages and still interact effectively - grumping about translation efforts in light of that doesn't seem very constructive...
Tom