Re: [PATCH] Chinese Language Maintainer

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Li Yang wrote:
> 
> I think you worried too much about this problem.  :)  Let me explain
> the situation here in China more clearly.  Actually, English is
> mandatory in most schools and universities.  Only very few people
> learn other language as a second language.  Therefore software
> developers who are almost educated should have the basic English
> skill.  However, that doesn't mean that they can read English or
> communicate with native English speaker very easily.  Consider your
> second language learn in school for analogy.

Actually, I disagree.  English *is* the second language learned in
school for most European developers (except, obviously, the ones from
the British isles), and we don't have that problem.

> Read in English will be much slower and more likely to cause
> misunderstanding.  This will
> reduce the likelihood greatly of English documentation being read.  If
> we are promoting contribution to the Linux community, we should
> maximum the possibility that these key documents being read.
> Translation will serve this purpose very well.

What we have found in Europe, is that that it has limited value, and
that the closer to the core you are, the less value it is, because at
that stage you should be communicating more with other developers.
Putting yourself behind a wall of translation is unfortunately a
detriment in that way.

	-hpa