Forum for non-English speakers?

Why is there no forum for non-English speakers? I see too few communication resources for non-English speakers in the world right now. For example, there is a huge interest* in Linux in Brazil (and likely in IT in general including BSD as well), but I can't find any good Brazil forums related to FreeBSD.

I suggest to add a new "FreeBSD Brazil" section on our forum.

* Brazil is in top 5 countries using Linux according to the Linux stats and popularity map of any snap package.

UPDATE 1: See clarification in the comment below.
UPDATE 2: Map of Linux users

Map.png
 
Why not start one yourself?

As with most questions along the lines of "why isn't there X?" the answer will be resources - time or money or humans. Usually all three.

I'd rather any financial donations I make to FreeBSD go on the support and development of FreeBSD. Maybe some advocacy.

Multi-language translations and forums etc. - they are going to be volunteer projects.
So, step forward, volunteers! You just need some forum software, some server space, a domain name, and some volunteers to help you maintain the server, the forum software, and to moderate the content.

Good luck.
 
Several communities support this idea. It is meant to promote or advocate for greater use of FreeBSD.

One thing you can also do is localising FreeBSD into one or more languages spoken in Brasil.

The FreeBSD team may not have the resources to drive your idea; hence, you can initiate it and in no time, many people will come supporting you.
 
My mother tongue is a language belonging to the Indo-European languages. English? definitely not.
Many years ago, there was a DaemonForums. Then I discovered FreeBSD Forums. When I signed up for FreeBSD forum, I read a reply to someone post (I think the reply was posted by DutchDaemon , but I'm not sure), and I took the advice seriously. I'll have to paraphrase it: First learn English, then FreeBSD. When I was a child, I've started to learn English. But at the time my English skill was no more than Micheal Moore speaking English. Am I fluent in English now? no, count the number grammar errors in this very post, but I keep trying. Different nations have their own language and tradition. That's great and I'm for it. But when it come to art, science and technology, it is necessary to have a common language to be able communicate with each other. Once upon a time it was Latin. Today it is English. You can always study and communicate in regional language, but it is limited and often inadequate.
 
Another day, another link to linux-hardware.org. aponomarenko, would you mind limiting self-promotion to a single thread?
IMHO it's fairly clear aponomarenko's intention is to enhance brazilian user's FreeBSD experience. This is a very diversified country concerning level of education, so many brazilians speak only portugese. The pros & cons of his tool have been discussed here elsewhere; at least using it (w/o uploading your system's data) is beneficial for FreeBSD users. Such DBs usefulness relates to the number of data it holds. Thus I don't mind he put that in his signature. Others do it as well, e.g. Zirias . Just my 2¢.
 
Why is there no forum for non-English speakers?
Which one? Or two? Which languages will you include? Which would you exclude? Can you limit it to less than ten? What about cross posting? What good information will get posted in one language but missing in the others?

And problem after problem after problem. Programming itself is an English language construct.
 
Why not start one yourself?

As with most questions along the lines of "why isn't there X?" the answer will be resources - time or money or humans. Usually all three.

I'd rather any financial donations I make to FreeBSD go on the support and development of FreeBSD. Maybe some advocacy.

Multi-language translations and forums etc. - they are going to be volunteer projects.
So, step forward, volunteers! You just need some forum software, some server space, a domain name, and some volunteers to help you maintain the server, the forum software, and to moderate the content.

Good luck.

Is it so expensive to just add a new unmoderated section on this forum below the Miscellaneous?
 
Which one? Or two? Which languages will you include? Which would you exclude? Can you limit it to less than ten? What about cross posting? What good information will get posted in one language but missing in the others?

And problem after problem after problem. Programming itself is an English language construct.

Second and, probably, third most popular language after English (with strong interest in IT, Linux and BSD, see link to a popularity map). Forum (new section of our FreeBSD forum) for Portuguese-speaking FreeBSD users, not for programmers.
 
I just want to say that Brazilian users don't have a good forum, but they have huge potential for using and testing BSD.

When I was a developer of one of the Russian Linux distributions, we had a huge community of Russian-speaking users (10k of active users daily), which made an invaluable contribution to testing the distribution (we covered all possible hardware configurations without having to purchase all of them, which is impossible). But none of them knew English.

Of course we need at least one volunteer with knowledge of Portuguese to mediate between the forum and the Bugzilla.
 
They would have to moderate any forum they have here. They said they don't have the resources and can't do it in the foreseeable future.

Why not start one yourself?
Multi-language translations and forums etc. - they are going to be volunteer projects.
So, step forward, volunteers! You just need some forum software, some server space, a domain name, and some volunteers to help you maintain the server, the forum software, and to moderate the content.

Good luck.

By the Portuguese language, not by country. There's also Portuguese speakers from Portugal, Angola, Mozambique and other places.

portuguese-speakers.jpeg
 
I suggest to add a new "FreeBSD Brazil" section on our forum.
Not a good idea.
First, why “Brazil” and not “Portuguese”? Would make more sense to do this by language, not by country.
Second: Tomorrow the next guy will ask for Spanish, the day after that someone wants an Italian forum, next week a Japanese one, and the remaining 500 languages will follow after that. You’re opening a can of worms.
Third: For practical and legal reasons, forums should be administrated and moderated by people who speak the language that is used in these forums. For example, for people who speak German there is bsdforen.de which is set up and maintained by people who speak German. In other words: If you would like to have a Portuguese forum, the best way is to create one yourself.

Note that there is a Portuguese BSD Users Group (located in Portugal) and a Brazilian FreeBSD User Group (FUG-BR), see the list of user groups. Have you tried contacting them and asking for interest in creating a Portuguese forum? Or maybe one exists already? That might be worth a try.
 
There are two problems with adding a new language/regional specific section to the forums.freebsd.org.
First, It's not going to end with just one language. There's going be daily request to add new one.
Second, Forums will face huge problem in SERP. Implementing a website under one TLD (in this case .org) to serve content in multiple languages and at the same time keep search engines happy is problematic. It doesn't matter how it get implemented, subdomain (???.forums.freebsd.org), lang-folder (/pt) or a just a subsection of the site ( forums.). Using proper hreflang or not, whether forum software supports it or not. You are going to have problem in search engine. why?
Most of people who search on web to find solution to their technical problem, will not type complete sentences. It's not going to be a linguistics-perfect sentence. Generally, they type just one or two keywords, some long-tailed keyword and selecting search engine auto-suggestion. Technical terms and keyword are largely language-neutral. Therefore you can find similar content in both forums main section and language-specific portion of forums. Search engines start to produce mixed result in the SERP. For example I search for a problem in English (dtrace), and there is a good change to get landed on pt section of the forums. And there's also problems with using VPN, browser language and search engine location guessing.
Finally, to label the 5th anchor-text on FreeBSD website menu as "Community", doesn't make it community. It is very easy to forget that it is just a Forum with administrators and owners who make the decisions. These kind of decisions are up to the owners of FreeBSD and FreeBSD Forums. I'm just a user and, frankly my opinion is irrelevant.
[EDIT:] On the community rant: I didn't want to be rude or nasty, but in reality, a community is a real life experience in a real neighbourhood with limited population mostly around a temple, church or other cultural entity, between people who share more than just a favourite ice-cream or OS.
 
Not a good idea.
First, why “Brazil” and not “Portuguese”? Would make more sense to do this by language, not by country.

I second this one. This was the first question that came to my mind.

But there is another important point. Somebody is responsible for this forum, and I mean legally responsible for the content. (I have my own opinion about free speech, but as a matter of fact there are some rules.)
Now if these people cannot read the content because it is a foreign language, then there is a serious problem.

So the way to go is indeed to setup a forum specifically for the user community speaking a certain language.
 
First, why “Brazil” and not “Portuguese”?

For the sake of the explanation, mixing Brazilians and Portuguese in a single portuguese-language forum sometimes work well, sometimes went pretty bad. For starters the actual spoken language (specially the vocabulary) is in practice very different[1], and often lead to length useless discussions about who is right and who is not.

For instance in Brazil we say "usuário" when referring to a computer user (and basically of any kind), while Portuguese say "utilizador" (in some cirscunstancies, but sometimes "utente" like of health services, and "usuário" in others). Both are technically correct in both languages but in Portugal this is socially unacceptable to use "usuário" in situations they usually use "utilizador" - specially of computer users.

Depending on who (individuals) are involved (or who "own" the forum) this kind of thing may be just an always present minor annoyance or lead to very hash situations. This often end up to something like Portuguese telling they "own" the language, and Brazilians[2] telling the Portuguese "how irrelevant" they are since almost all Portuguese websites outside Portugal are written in "brazillian"[3] and not in portuguese (actually can go pretty worse than that).

[1] I can speak both "languages" fluently (and with Lisbon accent, don't ask me why), at least I used to - likely a bit rusty now. :)
[2] who generally don't give a down about the language since it was just "inherited", and yet often see it more like a backwardness (would prefer other language).
[3] like the portuguese spoken in Brazil is often called by Portuguese, Angolans, etc. basically every native portuguese speaking person except Brazilians.
 
the actual spoken language (specially the vocabulary) is in practice very different[1], and often lead to length useless discussions about who is right and who is not.

For instance in Brazil we say "usuário" when referring to a computer user (and basically of any kind), while Portuguese say "utilizador" (in some cirscunstancies, but sometimes "utente" like of health services, and "usuário" in others). Both are technically correct in both languages but in Portugal this is socially unacceptable to use "usuário" in situations they usually use "utilizador" - specially of computer users.

Depending on who (individuals) are involved (or who "own" the forum) this kind of thing may be just an always present minor annoyance or lead to very hash situations. This often end up to something like Portuguese telling they "own" the language, and Brazilians[2] telling the Portuguese "how irrelevant" they are since almost all Portuguese websites outside Portugal are written in "brazillian"[3] and not in portuguese (actually can go pretty worse than that).
A rule can be made around that for them. To use the form of language that's the closet to fitting both variants of the language, and not to argue over the language itself. Or have a bot that goes in and changes words like that to a form that's more neutral to both languages, at least in the starting thread.

It would be convenient to be available to be read by those within 50million Portuguese speakers. Also, if there's a resource in either dialect, it's going to be read by someone of the other dialect, especially when resources in other languages are already scarce.
 
This is not like one side can't really understand the another[1] but more like a "tradition" of part of the population in both countries to purposely be unreasonable and unwilling to compromise but to challenge the other side for reasons... In short, tends to bring more bad then good, and if you look around both are usually separated.

[EDIT]

I can't tell what is the total of Portuguese speakers but just Brazil represent about 210 millions, add about 10 million from Portugal, the Africans, and a few others in Asia and the total number should get close of 300 millions. :)

[EDIT]

At the end this is not about the language but historic colonial era issues...

[EDIT]

Just to complete the thing, you can't call thise variations, dialects because both are officially formalized in each country. Also, there is the Orthographic Agreement of 1990 2009 which just made the things worse.

Barely changed the "Brazilian" but made the Portuguese "brazilianess", and you can imagine how the Portuguese don't like that and, for very good reasons.

For starters, that was a totally useless and worthless thing, many changes just brought confusion to the Portuguese and/or make no sense to the practice in there. Also, the portuguese in Portugal is (or was?) quite more sophisticated (and IMO more sexy) than the Brazilian...

[1] but sometimes this is true, but when this happens changing words is not a viable solution because the whole phrase isn't ineligible to the another. Plus Brazilians and Portuguese speak in different verbal modes. Also, Brazilians tends to also use a lot "gerundio" and Portuguese hate it (and for very good reasons, sounds wrong to start with, ugly).
 
Aren't there books published from both Brazil and Portugal, meant for both speakers? (The same exact book, that's printed in both Lisbon and Rio de Janiero.) Why not academic Portuguese, or technical language Portuguese.

Some online resources use one language for different variants of Portuguese.
 
Aren't there books published from both Brazil and Portugal, meant for both speakers? (The same exact book, that's printed in both Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro.) Why not academic Portuguese, or technical language Portuguese.

Depends of the book but they are often "translated". Expensive literature books (great authors from both countries) usually not because the target audience want the original text, but cheap versions for the general public tends to be "translated" too.

Specialized technical and scientific works involve more "sophisticated" people who don't care if that is brazilian or portuguese (and often enjoy the thing), but in general there are not too many technical or scientific stuff flowing between both countries - as one can imagine.

There are exceptions (Embraer KC-390 come to mind), but generally speaking both countries target different things. Portugal is heavy focused in Europe while Brazil has more wide interests.

[EDIT]

IMO, it would be a lot of better if Brazil just assumed the reality, switched to full brazilian and changed the name of the language in here to "brazilian" .
 
aponomarenko , you have right , every OS needs a way to "support" every language
but not in one forum,like this , because it will be a mess, like they told you, first will be one language
and later other..and another..and so

I am from argentina,speak spanish, and since forever all documentation,software..etc are only in english
(excluding the FreeBSD ones, like the man pages or manuals) , so, is the predilect language

is a good idea create a user group, but I dont see much people over there
and honestly...it depresses me , so..what is left?
create a forum like this(good looking,easy to read,with subsections)
the only problem is the hosting,in terms of money,but is not critical

if you want I offer myself to create something,If you support the comunity and want to
help FreeBSD there it will be a good start
 
Minimalist, technical, academic, scientific or simplified Portuguese. Not Portugal or Brazilian Portuguese, per se.

Examples are Wikipedia in Portuguese, which uses 1 language for different dialects, and the former Grande Enciclopédia Portuguesa e Brasileira.

Many books of the exact same replica are printed in many cities throughout the world. Some books, will say, printed in London, Chicago, New York. Grande Enciclopédia Portuguesa e Brasileira was printed in both Rio de Janiero and in Lisbon.

If there's only 10 FreeBSD users in all of Angola or Mozambique, when their dialect is closer to Portugal Portuguese, they should have access to a main resource which has a lot of users in it, instead of searching two different ones of the same type with replicated information and with less information.

It would be better this way, but it would be up to them.
 
Examples are Wikipedia in Portuguese, which uses 1 language for different dialects, and the former Grande Enciclopédia Portuguesa e Brasileira.

I've never heard about of the "Grande Enciclopédia Portuguesa e Brasileira", but the Wikipedia articles are mainly written in brazilian portuguese (with some minor things telling how they are in Portugal), except by Portugal specific articles which usually are written in Portuguese-portuguese. I assume the massive difference in the population size.

Minimalist, technical, academic or scientific Portuguese.

There is no real reason for that and would just make the things worse (see the edit in Thread 76359/post-471911). When there is willingness everything work-out nicely, the problem is part of the population in both countries who are purposely unwillingness...

Actually this is not really feasible to be done without formalizing a third thing due to the different verbal modes used in both sides of the Atlantic.
 
Back
Top