In Debian, there are non-English mailing lists for user support, developer discussions, i18n/l10n and news (think press)
The volume is rather small and threads that can potentially change the direction of the project are invariably in English (whether in the bug tracking system, mailing lists, IRC, etc.), but the infrastructure exists and at least for i18n/l10n and news I can say there's an operational dependency on it. Of course outside of Debian-hosted infrastructure, there are local Debian user groups, meetups, conferences, etc. I recently heard an anecdote from Chris Lamb (former Debian Project Leader) where he mentioned that after a non-English speaker was repeatedly using the word "abysmal" to describe the performance of a service (creating friction with the developers and operators) they chose what I would describe as a probing/educational communication style, where regardless of whether the performance of the service was underwhelming or not, the nuances of the concept were written back to the original poster to the point where either it was a personal attack (rare) or a different word emanated as alternative. PS: also sharing some resources from Debian's Anti-Harrassment team Wiki page [1] [1] https://wiki.debian.org/AntiHarassment ________________________________________ From: Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com.INVALID> Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 9:46 AM To: diversity@apache.org Subject: Re: [FAQ] Proto-FAQ question 1 IMO, we can come up with a way to support non-English official communication channels. We have to try to make it clear to as many people as possible that it is ok to write an email in your native language on dev@ and users@. We could decide that private@ is the air-traffic-controller channel and must be English. Hopefully the kinds of discussions on private@ are limited enough that people on that list can learn enough functional English to participate. Most are coders using English keywords in programming languages. When I see a post in non-English on the lists of the projects I participate in, I shove it into Google Translate. It works well enough to give me an idea of what the post is about. If I thought it was important, I would copy the English translation as a reply to the post saying "Google Translate said you are saying: ". Sometimes, another person on the lists who is fluent in the original poster's language will offer a translation as well as discuss with the OP in that OP's language. And that's all good to me. I do not think we want to have language-specific channels any more than we would tell some group they must use English when having a conversation in a public space. That's one analogy I use for the ASF: that we are basically working from a bench in the town square where everyone can listen in on our conversations and I can listen in on others. We should not start from the fear that some conversation that we cannot understand is going to have negative consequences. Some will, for sure, but it should be ok to ask for a short summary in English. We can make it a recommended or required practice for the PMC members to try to provide those short summaries, even if it is via Google Translate. Again, a restaurant analogy. If some tourists come into your restaurant, use their limited English to order food, then have a conversation in their native language while eating, that should be allowed, and the astute restaurant worker will still try to pick up on whether they are enjoying the food and the restaurant in general. IMO, Google Translate has worked well enough for me to pick up on non-English conversations on the lists and participate. I would not want to have to monitor other language specific lists. I would encourage everyone on our lists to use Google Translate to get a sense of the conversations in other languages. I will be super happy if my project's users@ lists are a mix of languages. My 2 cents, -Alex On 5/14/19, 9:19 AM, "Joan Touzet" <woh...@apache.org> wrote: This is something that's been on my mind a lot recently. We can't come up with a way to support non-English official communication channels for the Foundation as Bertrand mentions, but if we don't allow non-official channels in other languages, as the saying goes, "the Internet will route around us" and just create them outside of the ASF. I, for one, would rather see those discussions happening on ASF lists if at all possible. Maybe we can't have a dev-chinese@project.a.o, but couldn't we at least support a users-chinese@project.a.o? I think it's equally important to consider the i18n and l10n of the software projects that we shepherd. This is something I want to ask the assembled minds in the board/officers at the face-to-face meeting this week. I know there are some woefully under-recognized solutions within the ASF (such as our Pootle instance, https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftranslate.apache.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cda3f0dd6e5d34047c12408d6d88bbd79%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636934492017566418&sdata=Y1N%2FdjHRKBSqSrGZns9QxLSJenscUnv4uUhvW4IS1H0%3D&reserved=0). Look how few projects even try to use it. This is tragic. And doing what we can to improve things here I feel does fall under D&I. It even meshes with the US non-profit mission of software for/in the public good, since the US does not have an official national language, and has a large percentage of citizens and residents who speak other languages. On the intake side, we should consider translation of the FAQ and other documents into a few languages, with reverse translations back to English to ensure nuance is not lost (especially for critical documents like the CoC, general project bylaws, and maybe some of "The Apache Way" stuff.) These documents can clearly be marked as "not official" so as to not overburden our thin legal resources to date. -Joan On 2019-05-14 12:03 p.m., Alex Harui wrote: > It has been interesting to me how important words are in these discussions. In this case, the word "fix". We may not be able to "fix" as in "eliminate" the requirement to communicate in English, but I believe we can and should encourage communities to choose their words more carefully so that "fluency" is not perceived as a requirement. I already do filter my choice of words to try to avoid word patterns that non-US citizens may not understand since all but one of the most active committers on my project live outside the US. > > We might come up with other social suggestions like allowing posts in other languages on users@ lists, allowing posts in other languages on dev@ but recommending translation of the original post to English and requiring posts in English on private@. That's sort of how Flex and Royale operate today without any official documentation of this approach. > > My observation is that restaurant workers in the US in popular tourist areas are generally trained to be patient with non-English-speaking customers and also choose their words carefully. Why shouldn't we all take that approach at Apache? Another observation is that airline pilots fly to the US from all over the world and communicate in English to flight controllers in the US (and other countries too, iIRC). I'm fairly certain the US-based flight controllers choose their words carefully. I do not think all of those pilots from other countries are fluent in English. They have learned enough functional English to communicate on how to navigate and land an airplane. Does/should software development at the ASF require an even larger English vocabulary than navigating air-space? > > My 2 cents, > -Alex > > On 5/14/19, 6:27 AM, "Bertrand Delacretaz" <bdelacre...@apache.org> wrote: > > On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 3:09 PM Daniel Gruno <humbed...@apache.org> wrote: > > ...It's like democracy - while not perfect, it is (I would say) the least > > sucky way of ensuring fairness, openness and proper governance, as it is > > the most universal (and de facto standard) language we have.. > > +1 > > > I do not see the need for or lack of English skills as a thing *we* can fix... > > Same here, I was mentioning as one invariant that does affect who > joins our communities - or more precisely the way people contribute. > > -Bertrand > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: diversity-unsubscr...@apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: diversity-h...@apache.org > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: diversity-unsubscr...@apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: diversity-h...@apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: diversity-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: diversity-h...@apache.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: diversity-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: diversity-h...@apache.org
