On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 5:59 AM, drew jensen <drewjensen.in...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, 2012-05-22 at 08:25 -0500, Norbert Thiebaud wrote: >> On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:36 AM, sophie <gautier.sop...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > This is what language communities are supposed to do : give those who don't >> > speak English a chance to be part of the project. We can't rely only on >> > English speaking people to grow the community and represent it every where >> > in the world. This is why settling each of our actions on an i18n point of >> > view first is very important. >> >> That conjure to me the following quote (from a brazillian TDF member >> on the aooo-dev ML) >> >> "4 - Suddenly, TDF was requesting that every person who wanted to be called >> a "contributor" should fill a agreement request in order to be >> "recognized". So we became to be concerned about that huge amount of people >> who contributed and didn't want to fill a formal agreement to a foreign >> organization that don't speak their language and has a lot of "channels", >> many of them obscured. >> 5 - In addition, people who we were fighting bacame key persons in TDF. One >> of them became a "brazilian" member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when >> brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them >> didn't vote for him." >> >> Which, to me, indicate that the language barrier is being use and >> abuse to mislead (*), and the underlying 'nationalism' is disturbing >> to me. the notion the TDF should be the UN with 'national >> representative' is pretty scary (**) :-( >> > Hi Norbert > > I think you make too much of the statement from one person. Some people > will leave in a huff, no matter what policies are in place.
Drew, I quoted the statement above not for the specific of the case but for its illustration value: > > I also think that what you refer to as a problem with Nationalism is > not, let me narrow the quote: "One of them became a "brazilian" member of the BoD, with 70 votes, when brazilian accepted members in Brazil were less than 15 and most of them didn't vote for him."" isn't the author arguing that a BoD candidat that happen to have nationality X must have the majority support of the members that also share that irrelevant trait. and reciprocally, isn't the author complaining that the artificial (in our context) subgroup defined by that irrelevant criteria is not properly represented as such ? Considering that the irrelevant criteria in question is 'National Origin', how is Nationalism not an accurate description ? Maybe 'Chauvinism' ? To go back to the original issue: 1/ I have no problem with TDF developing alternative way to 'recognize' people. But that is more a Internal Marketing/Community Management topic than a MC topic. 2/ Volunteer can translate and help people that do not know any English, including our Statue/Bylaw and other Foundation related document, actually I'd encourage that, as it would help avoid some confusion, apparently. 3/ I have a practical problem receiving Application/Renewal request in anything but English. English is _not_ my native language, but that is a practical, and relatively simple(*), working language. And as much as I would like to, I cannot be expected to speak all the language of the planet, nor is any MC member. So, official/formal communication, like membership application and renewal, must practically be en English. I'm very open to review and correction so that we avoid Idioms and other complex formulation is such documents, but it shall still be in English nonetheless. (*)I've dabbled with few languages, by curiosity... I took German and Latin in middle school, I did a short stint of Spanish.. I even glanced at Russian, Japanese and Chinese... English, as it turns out if a pretty simple language. Very little grammar, almost no conjugation, no declination, fairly limited vocabulary... as a consequence it is fairly easy - compared to other languages - to reach a level that allow written communication. Norbert
