[Ubuntu-ch] Language

[Dirk Deimeke]

Hi,

to say that in the first place: It is no problem for me to communicate
in English but I see really some people who can not.

Please keep in mind that out there in the real world you can find
people without university degree or any sort of higher education.

> We are absolutely aware that we have a tricky situation in
> Switzerland, but the problem is well known and rather difficult to
> address. Unless other country teams within Ubuntu, we have never been
> a language oriented team in the first place, but more a social
> organisation gathering to spread the K/X/Ed/Ubuntu love in
> Switzerland. The choice is difficult to make, but we didn't want to
> interfere with the already existing French, German and Italian
> speaking communities and, knowing that there already are language
> specific mailing lists, IRC channels and forums, creating another set
> of language specific media would have been counterproductive.

totally disagree.

There are mailing lists for India, Great Britain, (nearly every state
of) the United States, many more. All of them have lists with English
as the language spoken.

If I follow your arguments, all English speaking countries should only
have one single list to communicate?

> - language teams not only are specific to a country but also for a
> language, splitting this up means loosing focus. Personally I
> witnessed too often this manpower splitting in Switzerland, always
> with negative results and think it's important to have a place where
> everybody can participate, regardless their mother tongue or cultural
> background.

Now you don't get the manpower you might need because of language
problems. You only address a subset of people who are willing to
engage.

> - due to it's geographic particularities, Switzerland has always had a
> terrible tendency to isolate itself and isolation within it's regions
> is still happening, a fact that is sad to observe in the 21st century,
> as it does not contribute to the coherence of the country and the
> understanding amongst the various cultural groups. Also, we are
> talking about technology and IMHO it's very strange to hear
> oppositions to English, the leading language in this particular field.

Now, you isolate from people of your own country who did not receive a
level of higher education and are used to speak and write English.

There are quite many people who can (read this as "are not able to") not
overcome this barrier.

> - The SwissTeam has been founded to spread the love in ALL the
> country, regardless the languages and cultural diversity. Also, not
> everybody living in Switzerland is Swiss nor does everybody speak all
> the languages, but from what I know about education in Switzerland (I
> was a teacher for almost 20 years), English is widely available and
> accessible to everybody.

Regardless the language meens what? Only people who are able to
communicate in English are addressed?

> - support is available through the Ubunteros who subscribed in the
> wiki, indicating their particular skills, region and languages so
> there is no reason to fear that somebody wouldn't find help if needed.

Agreed. But the page is in English as well.

I think the problem is that you can not imagine that this is a big
issue. I spoke to at least ten Swiss German people who would like to
engage in local activities but are not able to communicate in English.

> - We are well aware that many do participate in other mailing lists,
> channels or forums, but keep in mind that if you want to help
> Switzerland, it's not by supporting the GermanTeam who is only active
> in Germany, ditto for the FrenchTeam and the ItalianTeam. If somebody
> wants to help out in Switzerland we need a central meeting point. Of
> course, the existence of Switzerland specific groups in German, French
> or Italian forums is a plus, but there already is a Swiss multilingual
> forum available, namely Swisslinux.ch where all the different
> distributions find their space, ditto for the languages. Again, it's
> about avoiding to split manpower...

Totally agreed for the central meeting point.

But at this very moment you split the manpower.

Swiss German speaking people engage in Germany because of not having a
chance to do that in Switzerland (but all would like to do so).

I think the same comes to French and Italian speaking Swiss people.

> - GNU/Linux and its various distributions are international projects,
> so IMHO it's not bad for everybody to learn and improve their skills,
> be it linguistic or technical, and why not do this within this
> particular team?

I meet people in Switzerland like my landlord who are not able to
communicate in only one of the official languages of Switzerland and
you expect everyone communicating in English.

> - There are language specific groups available, so nobody is forced to
> converse in English if it's so difficult, but don't forget that
> English is one of the most widely used languages in the world (yes, I
> know about Chinese!) and collaboration in the Ubuntu SwissTeam is also
> collaborating in a worldwide community, if we want to share and
> participate English is mandatory.

I know.

> Of course we can improve the current situation, but in the preparation
> of the upcoming release party I got aware that we still are a very
> small group, despite the many subscribed users in Launchpad and the 65
> Ubunteros on the wiki. When we call for help, there are not many to
> step up to give a hand... An example: we were asked to do release
> parties in French and German speaking parts of Switzerland which
> worked well the first time, but seems to be far more difficult to set
> up a second time, again a manpower issue. The current result is one
> single release party in Zürich, nothing in the Suisse romande and I
> don't even mention Ticino and Grischun...

And again: The manpower is there ...

> Again, if somebody is not at ease in English, it's not a reason to
> step back.I have seen many people participate in the Swiss Team,
> regardless their language skills, geographical location or technical
> ability, it's all about sharing. Remember what Ubuntu stands for?

I know ... take a look at my mail address.

> One suggestion: if you write in another language, please translate
> your mail with the available tools (translate.google.com for example)
> and copy-paste the result in your mail. We are well aware that it's
> far from perfect, but at least everybody gets a chance to understand
> the topic. Even if more than 70% of the Swiss speak German, we have
> quite some folks on this list who don't, and these are not amongst the
> least active in the team.

No one, really (!), wants to close this list.

> Of course, the above is mainly my opinion but I know it's shared by
> others in the team and we are of course open to discussion about ways
> to improve the current situation. So much for herding cats...

Hey, it is ok, if you really don't  want to change it. You just have
to be aware that you will be miles behind your possibilities.

> PS. If somebody doesn't understand this mail, I'm willing to explain
> it in German, French or Italian.

I bet, that the people who do not understand English will never come to
this "PS." ...

Cheers

Dirk