I know you know, at least, read and write in english, but you don't live in England, nor USA, nor Australia... you aren't an english native speaker, in fact your dream (like mine) is to fly to London and improve your english practicing it everyday!
So, why you wrote that beautiful post just in one language that isn't your native one?
How difficult could be to translate it? Probably you originally created that article in your native language inside your mind after all.
You know what happens when an automatic translator try to do that job 🤷♂️
My proposal to you:
- Write your article in english, good!
- Translate it to your mother language, great!
- Put the tag #translated in both articles
- Put a link, a reference, in both articles to the other version.
What do you think about this proposal?
Note: I won't translate this article because I want all the comments remain centralized here.
Top comments (10)
IMO, every dev should learn English, to have a common language to access and present information. The best way to learn it is by exposition and necessity. Translations take away both exposition and necessity and so hinder this process.
What about people in the process?
What about people currently learning the language?
What about young ones who yet don't learn a second language, but already want project themselves as developers in the future?
What about separate jargon from plain english? Specially if you are starting with a new technology, and even if you are proficient with the language.
What about people who don't have full access to english education and are self-taught?
What about magnificent devs lost in other professions because they think like you?
What about magnificent devs who don't write great articles just because they aren't confident enough to write them in english?
On top of all this, what's the cost, the real effort, of translate an article to your very own language?
Don't misunderstand me, please, I think english is mandatory, but there is a process to learn it.
If you don't have the basic English skills required to read dev.to posts you're also not going to be able to understand stackoverflow, specs, manuals, etc. You wouldn't be able to profit from the work of others, forcing you to repeat all their mistakes. You wouldn't be able to properly name things.
So no, you should not venture to be a dev if you lack that very basic understanding of the language. (I'm using "you" as "a person" not you specifically).
This is harsh, but that does not make it untrue.
I know the post is old but I really know great developers in my country who don't have the English skills needed to read a full post on dev.to. I really believe it is an essential skill, but to say that "you should not venture to be a dev if you lack that very basic understanding of the language" seems very wrong.
That sentence was admittedly taking things a bit far, but I stand by my point that English in an essentially skill for a developer that should be learned sooner rather than later.
That's actually not so bad idea, but as far as I know, a lot of people prefer to comment their code as little as possible (especially if it is well written readable code). More comments = more time spent on the project which is not always the thing you want.
He is talking about article on dev.to :)
Ah, sorry, I have absolutely missed it somehow out of context. My bad.
Nice idea, actually I wrote in my native language(Spanish) and then translate to English and put a link of the Spanish version.
Probably I will use the tag #translated in the next post.
Please, feel free to comment in any language 😉