English is the lingua franca of programming but the DEV community is polyglot
Should I write in English or in my mother tongue ?
I think many of us here have asked us this question.
But the answer is actually obvious
Writing is its own reward
Social Media and its vanity metrics everywhere taught us the wrong lessons.
Writing, even just for yourself, on paper or on your computer, is always a useful exercice.
Writing in english is a great idea for your career, for too many reasons to write down.
Writing in your mother tongue is also super positive, because at playing with mother tongue is actually a very big deal in life.
Also don’t worry about the DRY principle here. You write for a different audience, with different references, a different mindset.
Translating is a creative act.
No one will be mad at you for writing in a language they don’t understand
Most people will ignore you, but that’s what we already do most of the time.
It’s absolutely fine.
Cross posting is good
Editor Note: I will now cross-post all my english and french content on DEV.to and on my website https://desviesdedevs.jmfayard.dev/
That’s how I now start all my posts on DEV.to
I do that to get the best of both world.
On my substack, I have a small but great audience that likes my posts and receive them by email.
Even if nobody interacted with my content on DEV.to, the platform has a SEO strength that I will absolutely never have.
But people do interact on DEV.to
Here are some proof that you can have readers in your mother tongue
A bilingual brazilian portuguese – english interview
Featured Org of the Month: Feministech
Michael Tharrington for The DEV Team ・ Mar 22
#community
#wecoded
A read who has read 4 ways to judo mansplaining and then went on to read 🇫🇷 4 prises de judo contre le mansplaining
A cool comment in esperanto
Bonega artikolo. Mi komencis pasigi tian intervjuon kaj viaj kolsiloj estas saĝaj 😉
Tamen kiel kandidato mi ĉiam diris ke mi deziras plu esti programisto kaj post kvin jaroj, mi havos pli da kompetencoj kaj pli bone laboros 😁
Kelkaj firmaoj starigas tiun demandon por scii ĉu la kandidato povas evolui en tia firmao (se la kandidato deziras iĝi arĥitekto kaj la firmao ne havas tian postenon, ili scios ke la kandidato deziros ŝanĝi post 5 jaroj)
A german reader who take the time and effort to answer me in french
Je pensais toujours que c’était les Allemands qui ne savent pas accepter aucune faute grammaticale ou formelle et qui toujours trouvent quelque chose qui est fausse. Mais les mauvaises examples de ce type of gens étaient et sont les profs de francais aux écoles allemands.
Les gens que j’ai rencontré en France, Belgie, Suisse ou Tunisie etaient tranquil sans fixation sur leur langue, sauf en Paris ou on m’avait donné des lecons.
J’aime les “FOTES”, ca resemble un peu les bandes dessinées underground à l’age des “K7” (cassettes de musique).
Merci pour l’inspiration de trouver du contenu en francais ici! Je suis étonné que je le sais encore. Et excusez moi pour ne savoir comment écrire une cédille sur cet ordinateur. Ma FOTE!
I rest my case : write in all your languages
The emoji convention
I suggest to follow my convention to start the title with the “language emoji” (actually country emoji) to make us all visible
And follow your language tags
In no particular order
#french Follow
#spanish Follow
#german Follow
#italian Follow
#japanese Follow
#portuguese Follow
Merci beaucoup – muchas gracias – grazie – danke sehr – obrigado – arigatou gozaimasou
In particular to @ingosteinke @michaeltharrington @lelepg @morgannadev @pachicodes @axel584
Drazen Dotlic
•
Mar 20
Just saw the French version and it is even more funny, kudos!
I absolutely loved “…vous pouriez mec-spliquer” 😂