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Our goal to make the Stack Exchange Network a great place to produce high-quality Q&A sites, no matter what language your speak. But we are still predominantly an English-speaking organization and we need to understand the underlying operation and issues facing these sites.

We allow the creation of non-English sites, but we have to insist that any posts on the META site must be in English (or translated quickly after posted). Posts on the Main Q&A can be written in the language of your choosing.

I know this is not ideal; It's all a bit of a compromise in lieu of saying "Sorry you cannot create sites for non-English sites until we have a proper localization interface."

For details, see

Is it OK to have non-English questions and answers?

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    Thanks, a canonical answer (in a question :) will help a lot.
    – Benjol
    Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 18:20
  • It's still acceptable to write meta posts in both languages, right? What about writing in French and requesting that someone who knows English come and edit in a translation? Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 18:48
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    @Brennan Vincent: Yes, both languages are acceptable. As long as the information can be communicated to us in some fashion in English. I'm not going to get all hung up on format or timing. As long as we can follow in (and participate in, if necessary) the conversations. Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 21:24
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    Shouldn't we vote to close this as "not a real question"? ;-)
    – Joubarc
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 7:42
  • Related: meta.french.stackexchange.com/questions/2/…
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 14:09

2 Answers 2

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I practice, we try to keep the important meta posts bilingual. That being said, I do not want to force people to post in English on the meta site. It's bad enough that the interface is in English, creating an entrace barrier for many subject experts. If someone needs help with the site features, and can't figure it out from the English documentation due to the language barrier, we aren't going to tell them to ask in English!

The French section of the on-topic rules requests that questions on meta “be summarized in English as far as possible”.

We try to ensure that all discussions that could interest Stack Exchange developers or community managers, especially bugs and feature requests, primarily in English or with systematic English translations. On the other hand, discussions that should involve the French.SE community, such as discussions about tags or question quality, should be primarily in French or at least with French translations.

If you find a meta post in French or English and would like a translation, please leave a comment (if you think the author of the post is capable of translating) or post a request in chat, and we'll oblige as time permits.


En pratique, nous essayons de veiller à ce que les messages importants sur le site méta soient bilingues. Cela dit, je ne veux pas imposer l'usage de l'anglais sur le site méta. L'interface du site est en anglais, ce qui représente déjà une barrière importante à l'adoption par des experts. Si quelqu'un a besoin d'aide pour l'utilisation du site, et que la documentation ne l'a pas aidé à cause de la barrière de la langue, nous n'allons tout de même pas lui dire de demander de l'aide en anglais !

La section en français des règles spécifiques du site demande de « résumer [les] messages [sur le site méta] en anglais dans la mesure du possible ».

Nous tâchons à veiller à ce que toutes les discussions qui peuvent intéresser les programmeurs ou les gestionnaires de communauté de Stack Exchange soient conduites principalement en anglais, ou au moins systématiquement traduires. En revanche, les discussions qui concernent principalement la communauté de French.SE, par exemple les discussions sur les étiquettes ou la qualité des questions, devraient être conduites principalement en français ou au moins traduites en français.

Si vous souhaitez une traduction d'un message monolingue sur méta, vous pouvez en demander la traduction par un commentaire (si vous pensez que l'auteur est capable de fournir cette traduction) ou en faire la demande dans le salon de clavardage. Nous nous efforcerons de fournir une traduction dès que possible.

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Maybe

like others have been doing so, whoever is able to both write his question in English and other language (French...) can do so...

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    If this "answer" was meant to mean I sugget you reword it, seems to me you're not quite making your point.
    – None
    Commented Nov 6, 2013 at 16:40
  • While bilingual posts are a worthy, lofty ideal, experience shows that nobody bothers. It's too much unrewarding work. (Witness even this thread…) Commented Nov 8, 2013 at 7:33
  • I know some "french" speakers I've shown this site and they complained that it seems (they think) that it's a mainly English site... they would like to write responses but, their English is so archaic...
    – iMitwe
    Commented Nov 12, 2013 at 6:35

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