Announcing Stack Overflow in Portuguese

> >One reason localization has been a very low priority is that we feel for our particular audience, namely programmers, English is the de facto standard language. Not that other languages aren’t important, but it’s easier to get engineering work done when everything coalesces around a standard language.

I'm gonna assume that Jeff Atwood said this. Does he speak more than one language? Because although how reasonable it seems that English is incredibly widespread among programmers, I think that any monolingual English speaker is going to have a very biased perception of the English literacy of programmers in a more international setting.

I have no problem believing that English is the most widespread auxiliary language in programming. But I'm not so sure about what percentage of programmers worldwide speak or write English, which the given quote seems to implicitly make a statement about.

>[Nota do tradutor: Porque português é a melhor língua, o Brasil é o melhor país e o Jay não consegue ler o que a gente escreve ;)]

>Queríamos começar com uma comunidade que atendesse a dois requisitos:

>Um grande número de desenvolvedores talentosos, em que Grande parte deles se sentisse muito mais confortável em falar sua própria língua do que o inglês

>Então a escolha foi muito simples. O Brasil conta com uma das maiores e mais fortes comunidades de programação do mundo, e isso sem contar Portugal, Moçambique, Angola e outros países menores que acrescentam ainda mais desenvolvedores talentos a esse grupo.

Why start with portuguese?

We wanted to start a community that met two goals:

A big number of talented developers that did feel much more confortable to speak in its own native language than in english.

Then the choise was pretty simple. Brazil have one of the stronger and vibrant programmer communities in the world, and lets not forget about Portugal, Moçambique(how is this spelled in english?) and Angola that adds even more to the talented pool of developers in this group

I dont know if its because the country is so big.. but culturally people dont care enough for english.. its something everybody wants to know about, of course .. but only the kids of the rich people that can pay for extensive english private class in expensive courses can handle it.. also they create couses with years (2 to 4) long courses.. so they end to be very expensive.. so its something that get in the end of the list of needs..

For instance, i am lucky, cause i learned it from movies when i was teenager, with subtitles on it.. it just happen naturally.. and also.. i needed to go further, as i work with technology.. and yeah.. the good things are in english.. so reading just completed the understanding of it..

but i see a ton of people here(in Brazil), (VERY GOOD hackers) that wont touch this world, because its in english.. Brazillian communitites always have a life on its own.. with its own culture.. like a little bubble .. (remember the Orkut phenomenon?)

Thats why Brazil is such a good opportunity for underdogs.. it doesnt follow too much the political fashion/tendency of the world.. Brazil has a move on its own.. you need to be here enough time to feel it.. and its vibrant..alive..

But its also not isolated.. its has much more in common with US than most of the people think.. with a destiny on its own

As a brazilian, I am not sure why that is, but I can make some guesses:

- Public education sucks (at least before you get to the university level) so we can just disregard that.

- Top private schools are outstanding. There's a lot of competition to get in the public universities, so the competition is fierce, among students and schools. However, that doesn't apply to English at all. They'll teach the english text comprehension skills required to get into a university and nothing more. I am sure there are exceptions, but that seems to be the rule.

- Private English courses range from terrible to great. There are several reasons for that, but that difference is not always reflected in their cost and it is not trivial to tell them apart. It usually takes several years to get from zero to a level where the student can talk to a native speaker. It is entirely possible for someone to enroll in a Comp. Sci course and an English one at the same time, and finish Comp. Sci, while being halfway through the English one.

I am not sure how that compares to the rest of the world. But the perception is that learning English takes a lot of effort, and "I'm already employed, so why bother?". The issue here obviously is that it shouldn't take that much time - we are not interested in fluency here - but if it did, then the opportunity cost would be too high indeed.

People only start taking English seriously when they get outside offers (which they fail to qualify), or start working for a company with foreign clients. By then, it is too late.

The advice I give to everyone is to make English the number one priority, but don't bother too much with formal schools. Things like movies, CNN and online games (with VOIP) can teach you the basics much faster. And most importantly, train the ears to recognize English phonemes. After that, you can get a teacher/institution to fill in the gaps. That saves a lot of time, because you'll rank much higher in placement tests, shaving whole years of slow learning.

As for the new site, I believe it will become an island of people that are unwilling to learn English. I am not sure what that says about their willingness to learn anything else...

That let us drop the political implications, and also use an 'engineered language', with an easier learning curve.