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Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

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Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#91
post #86
post #45

Programming 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…

I wonder how corporate programmers in non-english speaking countries communicate about programming. I would imagine that they use their local language for docs, commit descriptions, email lists, etc. I think most of the source code people can look at is for open source projects and they always go with english as the default even when there are mostly non-english speaking programmers. But what does it look inside priv…

> But what does it look inside private corporations?

In my experience (technical companies in countries where German is the main language) most of them use either English straight away or their native language mixed with a lot of english nouns. I never ever saw someone translating "commit" for example.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#92
post #69

Unintended consequence #1: duplicated questions. http://pt.stackoverflow.com/questions/4021/numero-de-vezes-q... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21550842/amazon-cloudsear... Corollary: answer "arbitrage" (translating existing answers for duplicated questions).

Completely intended, by my read. It wouldn't make any sense if you couldn't ask a question that was already asked in a language you don't know.

FTA: "we expect almost every question asked on the Portuguese site to also be asked (and answered) on the English site."

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#94
post #6

> We do want as much centralization as possible Yup, totally centralized. Spent half an hour figuring out where my question should go (StackOverflow vs Programming vs ServerFault vs SuperUser vs Ubuntu vs Unix-and-Linux). Ended up not asking the question at all. Shall they open some foreign embassies, I guess users'll spend 10 minutes more deciding in which language should they ask (i.e. whenever they prefer native l…

The only difficult difference here is Stack Overflow vs Programming, the others are pretty descriptive. The difference is not too hard to understand, but still not intuitive for a new user. There is also some overlap, so if you have a question about Ubuntu you can also ask it on Unix&Linux.

For me, Stack Overflow vs Programming is easiest to understand - it's whenever the question is about implementation or theory. But some areas, for example, packaging, lie in the grey area between programmers' and sysadmin's job.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#95
post #6

> We do want as much centralization as possible Yup, totally centralized. Spent half an hour figuring out where my question should go (StackOverflow vs Programming vs ServerFault vs SuperUser vs Ubuntu vs Unix-and-Linux). Ended up not asking the question at all. Shall they open some foreign embassies, I guess users'll spend 10 minutes more deciding in which language should they ask (i.e. whenever they prefer native l…

The only difficult difference here is Stack Overflow vs Programming, the others are pretty descriptive. The difference is not too hard to understand, but still not intuitive for a new user. There is also some overlap, so if you have a question about Ubuntu you can also ask it on Unix&Linux.

[deleted]

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#96
post #45

Programming 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…

If I am talking with another person that speaks my mother tongue I'd rather keep just the nouns awkward instead of making the whole conversation sound awkward. TBH, keeping jargon untranslated is not that big of a deal. Jargon is its own separate vocabulary - its not as if a non-techie english speaker will know what you are talking about if you mention a kernels or a data bus.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#97
Recent research in four universities in Brasilia (federal capital) area has shown that 50% of students are functional illiterates.

As I said before, we g(b)razilians can't write or understand or own mother tongue, imagine doing it with English.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#98
post #92
post #69

Unintended consequence #1: duplicated questions. http://pt.stackoverflow.com/questions/4021/numero-de-vezes-q... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21550842/amazon-cloudsear... Corollary: answer "arbitrage" (translating existing answers for duplicated questions).

Completely intended, by my read. It wouldn't make any sense if you couldn't ask a question that was already asked in a language you don't know. FTA: "we expect almost every question asked on the Portuguese site to also be asked (and answered) on the English site."

It was the same user asking the same question, and the English version may or may not be machine translated.

It feels spammy, specially since the English version isn't up to par. I'm not sure this is what they had in mind with that quote.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#99
post #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…

Your written English is better than the vast majority of our current undergraduate college students in America, so I really wouldn't worry about it.
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