Average number of languages you speak? Should documentation be translated?

Question

I found this question on SO, and then went to look at my university, and found the average number of languages that software engineering students speak is two to three.

I know this is not directly related to programming, but with the amount of companies employing persons from different countries (especially here in Europe, I don't know how it is in the US), I thought this would be interesting to ask.

In my case, which is a bit out of the ordinary, I speak five languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Russian. What about the SO community?

One main aspect of this question other than curiosity, was a reason proposed by a lecturer which said that documentation should be translated, especially due to the China/India/Russia outsourcing trends.

How many languages do you speak? Do you think documentation should be translated?

Edit: Another reason for this question, is that for example here in Sweden, even when software is written in English, employers normally request the developers to know Swedish just to be able to work, as the internal documentation is in Swedish most of the time.

Answer 1

• English
• Chinese

Never have used anything but English in my job though.

Answer 2

Personally I speak 2 languages fluently - Bulgarian and English. However I think that developer documentations as technical designs, requirements, API etc should only be documented in English since it's the standard language used in the industry. I've never used anything but English in my work. If the company is based in another country and most of the developers speak a language different than English then choose the most common language. There are some problems you will run into if you start translating the documentation in different languages:

• The effort will double (triple etc depending on how many languages you use). And developers are not really fond of documenting to begin with so this will turn documentation into an even bigger chore. Which will result in worse documentation overall.
• You will always need to employ speakers of all the languages you use
• The information might become ambiguous since one of the languages might start to be supported better (the one that's native to most developers) and the other language(s) will lag behind.

I don't think that outsourcing really requires translation of APIs etc since usually you outsource to someone that's already speaking your language - that's quoted as one of the problems with Indian outsourcing for example.

Answer 3

I speak German and English. Documentation should be translated if it is not a technical documentation but more a user handbook because almost every developer who would want to read the documentation speaks English.

Answer 4

I thought English was the only language in the world. Everywhere I go in the world, whether its "The West" (California), or the "Far East" (New York), everyone speaks English.
What's the problem? ;)

Answer 5

I speak German, English, and am learning Swedish. It's funny that you picked Sweden as an example, though, since I recently moved here for a job myself. I found that, unsurprisingly, all of our internal documentation was in English, not Swedish. I use the term "unsurprisingly" here because not only is this the norm in our field, but also because the Swedes have exceptional English skills.

I'm learning Swedish, not only because I really love learning both new computer and human languages, but also to communicate with my colleagues in their native tongue. The only case where I absolutely need to know Swedish is to read emails and to deal with localization of the software. As a programmer, I think that it's far more important to have good English skills than good second-language skills, but of course, if you have both, then it's always a bonus. But beyond that, it's just a matter of courtesy to my colleagues for daily communication and so on.

Answer 6

I speak four languages (German, English, French and Swedish, the latter two because I lived in these countries for some years).

In my opinion software and (programmer) documentation should be in English, I'd make an exception for end user documentation.

Mostly this is the case in my work, with some exceptions (e.g. requirements in German from big german car manufacturers). Other documentation is ostensibly in English, but it sometimes consists of strangely chosen english words following a rather german grammar (English for runaways as we joke). So it is an advantage to be german, speakers of English without knowledge of German would have trouble understanding that kind of mishmash.

Answer 7

There is this old joke:

Q: What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
A: Trilingual.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
A: Bilingual.

Q: What do you call someone who speaks 1 language?
A: American.

As a one-language American I have to admit that there is a kernel of truth to the joke. :-(

Answer 8

I am fluent in Hebrew and English, and can speak/read a little French.

I have worked abroad and studied at a graduate school that has many foreign students. For better or worse, the standard language of software projects is effectively English (partly because the language constructs are in English), and most outsourcing partners and other stakeholders expect materials in English. Therefore, software documentation (for maintenance/APIs) in English is acceptable IMHO.

User manuals, requirement documents, training materials, etc., those can be in a specific language.

All that being said, be aware of the fact that you will probably end up with badly-written English language documentation (and identifiers). If the documentation has external visibility, hiring an editor to fix the language might be beneficial.

Also, if you are working with outsourced materials from Asia, you have to become aware of words that do not translate directly with the same meaning. For example, my experience working with developers from India is that they use the term "doubt" to mean "question or issue that needs more explanation". Hence, you will get responses with doubts to things that the outsourcing team actually agrees with you on.

Answer 9

I speak English and a little bit of French. Just enough to get by. Doesn't help much. I don't run into too many people who speak french. Although a lot of them do speak Quebecois. I wish they would have taught that in school. It would have been much more useful.

Personally, I think that English is pretty standard as far as programming goes. I think for internal documentation should be kept to one language. And that language should be the most popular language for developers in your area, in order to make current and future employees more comfortable. Even for people who know many languages, translating well between them can be a difficult task. And even then, it's kind of time consuming.

As far as external documentation goes. Make as many languages as there is demand for. For languages that don't have as much demand, make it easy for others to modify your program and documentation to translate it into their own language should they want to use it.

Answer 10

100% Russian, 90% English, ~50% Japanese.

Being neither native, nor even good English speaker myself, I nonetheless consider translating documentation from English a form of harmful heresy. It is, perhaps, theoretically possible to be a decent programmer without being able to read English documentation, but, seriously, learning the goddamn language is a much less painful way...

Answer 11

Amazingly, for a working class guy from the city, I'm reasonably fluent in French. This came about because of a fluke vacation to France where I found out I had a ridiculous aptitude for it and ended up living there for a couple of years. I also speak conversational Japanese, and can actually make some sense of the mumbo-jumbo of written Japanese. Slowly. And, of course, English.

Answer 12

I am American, and I pretty much only speak Engligh. I studied some French in college, and a little Japanese in high school, but not enough to even begin to get by, let alone be close to fluent.

It seems to me that Europe is much better about multi-lingual education than America is. From the horror stories I hear about English teachers in Japan and Korea, it sounds like they are fairly bad about language education as well.

Answer 13

Fluently:

• Dutch
• German
• English
• Portuguese

Not fluent but can usually make up things out of context.

• French
• Italian

Answer 14

I would only claim to speak English and a little French, though I've studied (and subsequently forgotten) German, Japanese, Hebrew and Latin as well.

Regarding translation, we ship our products all over the world, and so our user manuals come in several languages; after all, we like to keep our customers happy!

Also, because our leading product family has a small text display, we have language packs for French, German and Spanish, with a Chinese version in the works. We've also had requests for several other languages, including Dutch, Malay and Czech.

Answer 15

Typically, I speak only one language well. There are a couple of other languages I have studied in school and with a little practice I could likely improve dramaticly as that would get my brain working in other gears in a sense.

Some documentation should be translated where the key may be in how the information is displayed, e.g. only words, words and pictures, mostly pictures, or some mix of audio, words and pictures, which may not be what you thought of when you mentioned "translation."

Answer 16

Those interested in the many discussions about human language and programming will be interested in the following existing discussions:

Programming code in a particular language:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/250824/do-you-use-another-language-instead-of-english
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/110987/pros-and-cons-of-localisation-of-technical-words
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/384683/if-you-are-working-in-a-non-english-speaking-country-do-you-write-your-developmen
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/553082/do-you-code-variables-in-your-language
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/440052/should-identifiers-and-comments-be-always-in-english-or-in-the-native-language-of
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/147275/ (Should stackoverflow be english only) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/574942/using-a-non-english-ubiquitous-language
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/619413/what-are-some-of-the-best-non-english-general-programming-resources

Connecting with others in a different language/culture:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/204506/how-to-manage-non-english-speaking-customer
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/352288/cultural-coding-differences

Programming languages that have native implementations:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/300276/programming-languages-not-in-english
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/202723/coding-in-other-spoken-languages
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/288061/do-there-exist-any-compilers-with-localized-versions-of-programming-languages

Answer 17

Now is a great time to be a native English speaker. At my office I work with people who are native speakers of at least six other languages, but we use English exclusively. I know enough Spanish to be dangerous and use it at least once a week, but rarely at work. Living in Southern California, I don't fit into the typical American category of language acquisition.

I think the best approach is a pragmatic approach. In California, our laws are written in English, but certain public documents are translated. Last time I counted, there were four different languages printed on our precinct's election instructions. Other precincts will require more or fewer languages depending on their demographics. My son's school often sends out information in three languages, but class instruction is mostly in English. So California has one semi-official language (English), but supports many other languages as needed.

So I'd recommend a similar approach to documentation. Have one official language for developers to use when conducting their business. In your example, that's Swedish. Then based on your users (or perhaps the users you want to attract) translate external documentation as needed.

Answer 18

I know enough Spanish to get by, but not enough to use it in a support or technical environment. Technical documentation should be in the preferred language of the developers (usually English) and the language(s) of the end user docs would depend on your base.