User Guide Translations?

"Off the record", sharing my own opinion, I actually do discourage third-party translations. For the following reasons:

- A single translation error may (and IMO will inevitably) cause confusion at best, or expression of what is completely opposite of the original texts.
- With the exception of a few languages, our team has no way of even verifying the correctness of translations.
- Whether we like it or not, English is the de-facto universal language of our profession and it is EXTREMELY hard to progress without it. Therefore, avoiding it by using translations is counter-productive and an inherently bad idea.

I know many would want to simply wave-off that last point, but it is simply the reality. English is not my native language too - I understand how you feel - but we have to accept it.

The truth is that is hard keep translations up to date and with a good quality control, but is this a reason for not to do it? Is better just keep the developers that don't speaks English without that support, or to do our better trying hard, trusting each others and saying "well, that's the better that we can offer to you at this moment, may be imprecise, but you can see the original documentation if you do prefer"?

Have you ever seen about peoples doing something together, trusting each others, without any gain with it? It sounds like the core of the open source thinking, right?

The truth is that is hard keep translations up to date and with a good quality control, but is this a reason for not to do it?

Yes.

Is better just keep the developers that don't speaks English without that support, or to do our better trying hard, trusting each others and saying "well, that's the better that we can offer to you at this moment, may be imprecise, but you can see the original documentation if you do prefer".

Have you ever seen about peoples doing something together, trusting each others, without any gain with it? It sounds like the core of the open source thinking, right?

No, quite the opposite - if trust alone was enough, we wouldn't have open source. But that's a very long and ultimately irrelevant topic.

It doesn't matter how hard you try to provoke empathy - it's not rational and won't magically make me fluent in Chinese or Danish, nor give me the time required to do proofreading.

Anyway, the bottom line is this - I can't stop anybody from doing translations, I'm just warning you about the dangers of it. You obviously disagree and that's fine, but you can't force anything either, so that's as far as we can both go.

Narf, I'm sorry if it sounds personal, but my post was not directed to you or a reply to your post. I used the word "you" like "you, the reader" to make the reader to question himself.
As you shared your opinion, I shared my opinion too, with questions to the readers answer in their minds.
Again, I'm sorry if it sounds directed to you.

Inferring from the context of my own post that preceeded yours, it does sound a bit like it was directed to me ...

But regardless of that, I don't understand what you're sorry for. I didn't take it as offensive or anything, just replying to it.

I work already on a Indonesian user guide translations. In the next CI 4.0, I also will handle it.

Tafsir NU adalah sebuah aplikasi yang berisi kumpulan kajian kitab kuning yang disampaikan oleh Kiai Nahdhotul Ulama seperti Gus Baha, gus mus, dan kiai lainnya dalam format audio.

Even though I'm Dutch and English is not my native language I do share the believe that any programmer should be able to understand English. It's a basic skill, just as it is required to have some of math skills, logic insight etc. If you don't have those skills you're better off finding some other job.

Translating such a big document takes an enormous amount of time (to do it right). Also taken into account that the information can get changed pretty easily I believe it's a bad idea to be dependent on a single user / a few users.

Having outdated, incorrect or even badly translated documentation is far worse than only having an English version. New users can get frustrated easily if something inside the translated documentation is wrong, it could steer them away from CodeIgniter instead of helping them.

If you want to contribute to CodeIgniter in your native language then I believe it's better to write small tutorials, blogs posts, Youtube posts or join the conversations in the Regional User Groups here on the forum, etc. That way you can excite people from your country about CodeIgniter.