Re: Bug reports in English only? (Re: OT: spam in this newsgroup)

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

keichwa@gmx.net (Karl Eichwalder) writes:
> I'm wondering whether that's still a valid restriction.  I like to help
> with bug reports written in German.  My proposal:
> 
>     Please write in English if possible, because the Emacs maintainers
>     do not necessarily/always?[please, choose a good word] have
>     translators to read other languages for them.

I don't think it's really a `restriction', but rather just a strong
warning that bug reports are much more likely to be considered if the
maintainers can read them.  Even if there are some other-language
speakers reading the bug report lists (and in fact there are quite a
few), the only guarantee that can currently be given is that english
will be understood (though to be honest, I guess German would be a
pretty good bet too...).

So in a general sense, it's still a better bet for someone to use
terribly broken english than some other language, and the message shown
has to emphasize that; I'm a bit worried that anything less strong that
the current message would result in people thinking `well, _maybe_
someone understands language Foo, and my english isn't very good, so...'

[Note that if someone's english _isn't_ understandable, then it's
often easy to see where they sent their message from, and for a speaker
of that country's language to ask for a clarification, if they happen
to be reading the list -- and if there is no such speaker reading, well,
the reporter isn't any worse off!]

-Miles
-- 
Yo mama's so fat when she gets on an elevator it HAS to go down.