[Toolserver-l] ts-admins language

[Marcus Buck]

seth hett schreven:
> Hi and 'gudn tach'!
>
> On Tue, June 29, 2010 12:37, Marcus Buck wrote:
>   
>> Andre Koopal hett schreven:
>>     
>>> The solution we mostly take is to answer in dutch or swedish or
>>> something :-)
>>>
>>>       
>> Wow, how mature... Hoe durven ze geen Engels te spreken?
>>
>> If River Tarnell does not speak German and recommends using English if
>> people want to get a quick answer from him without one of River's
>> co-admins being interpreter, that's of course okay. But intentionally
>> being unhelpful to people who in good faith use their native language
>> (which in the case of German will be understood on this list) is just
>> offensive and arrogant.
>>     
>
> On the other hand you could call someone offensive or arrogant (or at
> least not-thinking-enough), if he uses his small native language in an
> international project.
>   
Interesting that you call it an 'international' project. That is 
technically true, but Wikimedia does not involve 'nations' or 
'countries' but rather 'language communities'. So the more appropiate 
adjective would be 'multilingual'. And if you replace 'international 
project' with 'multilingual project' in your sentence it doesn't sound 
that meaningful anymore, does it?
> Of course, in most cases none of them is really arrogant or maliciously
> offensive.
Arrogance and offensiveness rarely involve real maliciousness. Many 
people act in good faith while being arrogant and offensive. They just 
don't realize their rude behaviour.
> If someone replies in Swedish on a German request, one could
> take it as nothing but a joke and a hint 'try using the common language,
> please!', which mostly will be English, nowadays.
>   
This "common language" is spoken by less than a quarter of the world 
population. If we only count decent English it's more like 10%.

If somebody asks a question in a non-English language what would happen 
in the optimal case:
a) one of the other list members knows the language, knows the answer, 
answers the answer in the non-English language and adds a sentence in 
English telling the other list members what he answered (so they can 
make addenda if necessary which will be translated into the non-English 
language)
b) one of the other list members knows the language, but doesn't know 
the answer: He acts as a interpreter between the original poster and the 
list
c) none of the list members knows the language: if some time has passed 
and noone has initiated a) or b) one of the list members answers the 
question with something like "Apparently nobody speaks X, perhaps you 
could try to ask in English so more people can understand your 
question." Either the original poster speaks English and asks in English 
or he doesn't speak English. In the latter case he's lost but at least 
the list tried to help without making jokes about him.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox
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