Re: [tdf-discuss] Multilingualism and discussions

On 20 oct. 10, at 00:05, Marc Paré wrote:

> I was under the impression that we were all in agreement, that the "lingua franca" of the 
> mailists is English and that localized mailists were to encourage users to contribute in their 
> own language.

I think that is a mistaken view of the issues at hand.

There should be English specific lists so that English speakers can contribute in English to 
whatever issue they have.

We need to have strict formal equality between linguistic communities for the TDF/LibO to be really 
based on a democratic process.

Then, there should be global lists where global discussions take place. Such lists would obviously 
gather a less important number of involved people and could be a place where multilingual 
information is exchanged. Sanitizing everything through English when most contributors are not 
English natives is not a realistic approach.

> Therefore, we should then make sure that information/issues from the localized mailists is passed 
> on to the main English mailist through either the mailist moderator or some 
> ambassador/spokesperson to the localized mailists to assure the flow of information to the SC or 
> appropriate decision making group.

This is totally unrealistic and reduces the contribution of non English speakers to the filter of 
their spokeperson when no filtering takes place for English speakers.

> Maybe we should work on improving the process of the reporting of localized groups' concerns to 
> the main English mailists.

No. The problem is to ensure that there is a good signal/noise ratio on supposedly global lists and 
whatever S/N ratio on language specific lists.

We do not have to reproduce the English based corporate structure of Sun/Oracle in TDF. This is a 
thing of the past.




Jean-Christophe Helary
----------------------------------------
fun: http://mac4translators.blogspot.com
work: http://www.doublet.jp (ja/en > fr)
tweets: http://twitter.com/brandelune


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