Myself a non-native speaker of English, I fully agree that diskussions on en WP should be held in English. However, IMO the policy should not be that posting in other languages than English would be "not allowed or sternly frowned upon". Rather, efforts to write in English should be encouraged. I.e., don't say "don't write in foreign languages". Say "explain what you mean in english, and if you quote sources in other languages please translate. If you find doing so difficult, please try and find someone who can translate for you" and then gently point them to the relevant Babel user category as a means to find people to ask.
I have myself recently translated a quotation in Swedish, used to support a point of view, on an article talk page. I can happily do so again, if someone thinks (s)he has a good source to support his/her opinion but is not brave or confident enough to translate it to English - and finds the matter important enough to take the trouble to go ahead and ask me. If it was not important enough to take the trouble, then (s)he needn't post it.
I hope, though, that I can write a short sentence,like "hi, cool to see you active at the English version as well" in Swedish on a user talk page without offending anyone. (I did once, and got a comment from him that people might not like it.)
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On 6/13/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
If anything at all needs to be done, I'd suggest that someone leave a polite reminder that this is the English Wikipedia, most english-first-languagers are notoriously monolingual, and that the peanut gallery would really like a translation. :)
Even of those us who didn't learn English as a first language would appreciate a translation, unless it happens to be in our first language, which in my case (modern Greek) it almost never is.
-Mark
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