Most Russian programmers I know speak enough English to get by in most situations. I can't speak for other countries though.
Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
71–80 of 260 posts
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#72Programming specific I think is easier in English. I speak 3 languages and understand 4. Talking about programming, computer science and technology in non-Engish is awkward. It either is necessary to just use English terms anyway for every other noun or struggle with awkward translation of them. Things like kernel, doubly linked list, hash table, binary tree, greedy algorithm, they are all invented in English and whe…
Perhaps the point isn't so much the translation of technical jargon, but the ability to discuss meaning and explain nuances. If you work in say, a Japanese environment, you might well pepper your Japanese conversation with terms like "kernel", "hash table", but the sense of your conversation is mostly contained within the Japanese portion of the vocabulary used.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#73"It’s almost impossible to feel like part of a community if you’re not highly proficient in the language. Even non-native speakers who are fluent enough to read posts in their second or third languages often aren’t comfortable enough to write in them."
Wow, this is true! I am brazilian and you have no idea how much effort I put in writing every single comment here on HN. And the longer de comment is, the more stupid mistakes I make; e.g., i usually write "no" instead of "know" or vice-versa, just because in my brazilian mind they sound exactly the same. And at my most voted comment ever I wrote "maked" instead of "made". No one mentioned (?) it, but I still feel the shame.
I think it is a great move by SO, lots and lots of developers I meet here (i am not one) don't speak fluent english. Our basic education is very poor (in every aspect, including english language there). If we want a world where everyone can learn to code/develop early in life, this sure come in hand in Brazil, where there is a huge just-got-out-of-poverty youth that didn't learn english at all, but could easily learn to code.
Congrats SO!
edit: I noticed I just wrote "de" instead of "the". Stupidest mistake I often make. Again, just because in my mind they sound exactly the same - and "de" is a word (of) in portuguese. Gosh, I make this mistake for so long, I should have learned already.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#74Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not just use Google translate? (or some equivalent)
If you don't know any English and you were to auto-translate your question. I think the vast majority of the time you'd get the answer you're looking for. You don't even need the result to be very grammatically correct or to sound natural. Most of the time you just need to get the gist of it and get a code snippet.
It'd be helpful if there was a translation scheme that was targeted towards the programming field so keywords were translated appropriately (so like, whatever the Portuguese equivalent of 'namespace' would translate accurately to 'namespace' etc. etc.). I feel like creating of map of terms would be relatively easy.
In the grad scheme of things I really really hope knowledge is consolidated in English. It's the lingua franca of the world, and it's also one of the most expressive languages. I spend some time working in Japan, and they had so much knowledge squirreled away from the world b/c they were effectively too lazy to learn English. (they're large enough, and advanced enough that they can afford to maintain trade journals and online technical communities in Japanese)
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#75I have strongly mixed feelings on this. When I was a kid my family moved to Brazil for a couple of years and I learned Portuguese. When I was about 20 I moved to Chile and learned Spanish. Speaking the language of the culture you are in is hugely important - and not very easy. So on the one hand if the culture of programming is in English (is it?) then I would strongly encourage anyone wanting to program to learn Eng…
While learning English will help immeasurably when you're learning to program, the languages themselves are often highly English-baed, trying to tackle programming and English at the same time makes for quite a barrier. Since being able to ask difficult, technical questions in your native language would make it easier to learn, I don't see what's so bad about that. Yes, it fragments the community, but it also recogni…
> Trying to tackle programming and English at the same time makes for quite a barrier.
That's how I played all games as a kid :) Civilisation + dictionary FTW
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Roberto Ierusalimschy Waldemar Celes Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo The folks behind Lua (programming language)
The Lua developers are Brazilians, hence also not from Japan, China, or Russia (as the original article asks for).
I don't believe the OP actually meant, strictly speaking, Japan, China and Russia full stop. It was more like: name any famous developer from the non-English speaking world...
And yes, the three names I listed are all Brazilians.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
While learning English will help immeasurably when you're learning to program, the languages themselves are often highly English-baed, trying to tackle programming and English at the same time makes for quite a barrier. Since being able to ask difficult, technical questions in your native language would make it easier to learn, I don't see what's so bad about that. Yes, it fragments the community, but it also recogni…
> Trying to tackle programming and English at the same time makes for quite a barrier. That's how I played all games as a kid :) Civilisation + dictionary FTW
More than one of my non-native English co-workers has said the first English phrase they understood was: GAME OVER
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#78Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not just use Google translate? (or some equivalent) If you don't know any English and you were to auto-translate your question. I think the vast majority of the time you'd get the answer you're looking for. You don't even need the result to be very grammatically correct or to sound natural. Most of the time you just need to get the gist of it and get a code snippet. It'd be help…
I want people to give you careful detailed replies in their native language, with a Google Translated copy of their answer too.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#79instead of starting a brand new stack overflow in another language they should think of some way of letting people translate questions & answers and earn karma for that. this way, like wikipedia, you can always go from one language to another for the translation
That's basically what they are doing. If someone asks a question on the Portuguese then it would be easy for an English and Portuguese speaker to search the English site for the answer and then post to the Portuguese site and earn their karma.
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Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Matz immediately came to mind. Also, to the question of english but not native would be Salvatore of Redis fame.
So, not to be mean, but can you name his FQJN (fully-qualified Japanese name) offhand? The score of people here saying "Matz" somewhat underscores the issue.
The thing about coming up with a Japanese name is that the names are going to be unfamiliar.
Kind of like how I wouldn't be able to memorize 10 Swedish names as easily as I could British names.
I'll remember a name like John Carmack much more easily than a name like Jonatan Söderström or Keiji Inafune.