French Language and Usage

There’s a bit of a leadership vacuum inside the new Stack Exchange communities in public beta. We’ve put a lot of responsibility on each group to take ownership of their own site. The Stack Exchange team can act as guide, but we don’t always have the domain knowledge to understand the needs of each group. As the Network expands, this stretches our ability to assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed.

That’s why I am in the process of identifying and organizing a team of provisional Moderators from within each community (about three per site, starti …

Stéphane Péchard

oui, tu parles plutôt bien, félicitations !

M'vy

8:34 AM

Bonjour!

Rebecca Chernoff

@StéphanePéchard Si seulement. J'ai oublié...tellement(?).

Stéphane Péchard

tu as de bons restes en tout cas (on dirait : 'J'ai tellement oublié')

mais ta grammaire semble correcte, et c'est souvent le plus dur

si tu ne fais qu'inverser les mots, c'est pas très grave, ça donne du charme :-)

Rebecca Chernoff

ha

M'vy

Moi c'est pareil, mais avec l'allemand. Par contre mon anglais s'est bien amélioré depuis que je fais de l'informatique.

Stéphane Péchard

j'ai tout oublié de l'allemand moi....

@M

oups...

M'vy

8:38 AM

^^

Jez

gah!

why was this removed?

discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/1829/…

No wonder I couldn't find a comment I was looking for.

M'vy

These are not the comments you're looking for!

Jez

So, what do we think the best tags for question language would be?

Rebecca Chernoff

J'ai besoin de trouver quelqu'une qui va réparer á chaque petit erreur que je fais. J'ai probablement rapelles un idiot.

Jez

'french-question' and 'english-question' are descriptive, but in English.

Rebecca Chernoff

8:44 AM

Ok, it took me way too long to think through that. And I probably butchered it. I fold. q:

Stéphane Péchard

@RebeccaChernoff :-)

I don't get your second sentence...

Jez

'question-fr' and 'question-en' aren't as description but they happen to work in both languages :-)

Stéphane Péchard

what did you want to say?

Rebecca Chernoff

@StéphanePéchard "I probably sound like an idiot." Heh.

@Jez, those are awful tags. check out the german site.

Jez

well, 'en' would be 'an' in French i guess. but it's not far off

:-P

M'vy

8:46 AM

@Jez I'll go for FR / EN associated with country flags?

Stéphane Péchard

@RebeccaChernoff I would say: 'J'ai probablement l'air d'un idiot'

Jez

@RebeccaChernoff it'd be easier if the A51 discussion hadn't been deleted for reasons beyond my comprehension

Stéphane Péchard

even if we loose the 'sound' meaning

Rebecca Chernoff

ah

Jez

@RebeccaChernoff but there is a Google cache: webcache.googleusercontent.com/…

M'vy

8:47 AM

@Jez Even if one would complain that France is not the only French speaking country as UK is not the only speaking english... but still.

Jez

@RebeccaChernoff "J'aimerais bien avoir un site purement francophone, mais la différence est: Les "followers" ici n'arrivent pas à sélectionner les questions exemples. Donc, je propose de soutenir "French language and usage" et d'introduire de tags qui permettent a filtrer les questions anglaises et les traductions."

Rebecca Chernoff

really, check out both the german and japanese sites. look at what they've done.

Jez

@RebeccaChernoff so my plan weas to tag each question to indicate whether it was in French, or English. That way, 'French-only' people can filter the English ones out and vice-versa.

I am looking at the German one now

it seems they've not done anything like that. so what?

M'vy

@RebeccaChernoff Sounds reasonable.

Rebecca Chernoff

They've had these exact discussions on their meta.

Jez

8:48 AM

they don't have a userbase that wants it

they don't have the same userbase :-)

Rebecca Chernoff

-1

Q: Should there be tags for the language used in a question?

Should there be tags for the language used in a question? Obviously, this would enable good filtering. Upvote this question if you are in favour of: Each question should have a tag lang:en or lang:de or lang:en-de

discussion

10

Q: Which language should tags be in?

While questions could vary in language, the tags have to be in one language for obvious reasons. Tag synonyms would work fine, but we'd have to decide whether German tags should point to English tags or vice versa. Which language?

discussion tags

basically, check out their oldest meta questions: meta.german.stackexchange.com/questions?page=6&sort=newest

Jez

"You know a meta tag when you see it because meta tags don't make any sense unless they are paired with other tags."

I don't understand how that's the case.

How does 'french/english question' not make sense unless paired with another tag?

M'vy

Because you don't tag a question with just 'french'

Rebecca Chernoff

It's the same as like on the cooking site, there's no [cooking] tag.

That's what the entire site is about.

Jez

there isn't the same issue there.

it's English

Rebecca Chernoff

8:51 AM

No need for the tag on every question.

M'vy

French-to-english or english-to-french seems also bad too me. Translation is better

Rebecca Chernoff

It is.

@Jez they don't, and that's the point.

Jez

they don't what?

Rebecca Chernoff

they don't make sense without another tag

Jez

they do to me

it's a french question. that makes sense.

Rebecca Chernoff

8:52 AM

The site is about french. Putting [french] on it doesn't tell me anything new.

Jez

(question in french, i mean)

Rebecca Chernoff

It doesn't tell me what your question is about.

Jez

I'm talking about the language it's written in.

no, it doesn't, but then give a good reason why a tag should have to be that

Rebecca Chernoff

12

Q: If the same question is asked in German and English is it a duplicate?

If two effectively identical questions are asked but one in English and one in German, how do we handle these. Are they two completely different questions? Should one be closed as an exact duplicate?

discussion exact-duplicates

M'vy

That's a tough question. Tags where not meant to address this in fact

Stéphane Péchard

8:53 AM

I wonder if tags are the good way to differentiate this

@Mvy: exactly :-)

Jez

at the end of the day, i just see tags as 'some useful meta info' on what's being tagged

Rebecca Chernoff

@Jez that's the entire purpose of tagging.

lol

Jez

IMHO whether the question is written in en or fr is 'some useful meta info'

Rebecca Chernoff

No.

M'vy

But I agree with @Jez that filtering could be useful

Rebecca Chernoff

8:54 AM

It shouldn't matter.

Jez

shouldn't matter, as in if everyone spoke every language it wouldn't

Rebecca Chernoff

Seriously, German Language and Usage and Japanese Language and Usage have had these same discussions.

Jez

but then you wouldn't need a FL&U site :-)

Rebecca Chernoff

It's 4am, I've gotta crash. But the site will start off soooo much better if you read through the discussions on ^^^ and learn from what they learned.

Jez

@RebeccaChernoff I'm reading it

M'vy

8:55 AM

@RebeccaChernoff Sure. G'night!

Jez

i don't really agree with it

"no one ever browses by or searches for them"

I think some have said they'd do just that

maybe not on those sites, but on this one.

Rebecca Chernoff

What if the question is in french but all the answers are in english?

Jez

the FAQ could say you should answer in the lang the question was posed.

Rebecca Chernoff

let's put both [en] and [fr] on it!

M'vy

@RebeccaChernoff hm. Good point.

Rebecca Chernoff

8:56 AM

I try to make those every once in a while. q:

Jez

in fact that was one idea I had for the faq

(i didnt just think it up!)

I'm guessing those asking in English are more likely to wanna see an English answer, and same for French

Rebecca Chernoff

has been discussed on the other language sites (:

Jez

well point me to a discussion where there isn't a 50/50 split in opinion

as far as I can tell, it hasn't really been resolved

apart from Jeff doing the usual diktat thing of "dont use meta tags because i say so because im the supreme leader of the universe"

Rebecca Chernoff

Having an [en] and [fr] tag will ruin a lot of functionality and usefulness. We've made this mistake several times.

nite.

M'vy

4

Q: In what language should we answer if the question is translated?

This is related to what language should the questions be written in? Should we translate posts as a "community norm"? If a question is asked in two languages (most of the time German and English), which language should we use for the answer? A few suggestions: when in doubt, us...

discussion

15

Q: what language should the questions be written in?

Please note: this is supposed to be on "meta". I was about to ask a question on the main website, but was not sure if we are supposed to ask questions in English, or in German, or a mixture, or even both. My guess would be that most questions will get asked in English. But I wanted to be sure be...

discussion meta

Jez

9:01 AM

> I propose that ideally answers use the same language as the question, but to maximize participation, if people fall short of the ideal, someone can just add a translation.

hmm.

well, whatever.

they say "ideally the language of the question"

but you can choose to answer in the other language

M'vy

Yes. That's the drawback of openess

Jez

I think that should be something for the FL&U community to decide, really, because it is subjective. Just because GL&U did one thing doesn't mean FL&U has to do the same.

I'm just aware that some Bon Usage people are not going to want to bother with English questions.

if you force them not to filter, they may not participate much (or at all)

M'vy

@Jez Sure. But try no to go too fast. I think they had also experience and we don't want to make same mistakes. We want the proposal to be strong.

Jez

Who's to say they 'made a mistake'? :-)

M'vy

BTW, all the person involved in the beta will be speaking both languages

Jez

9:07 AM

GL&U usage is pretty low right now, maybe tagging question language would've been better, who knows

M'vy

So this is not a problem at the moment.

Jez

are you sure? there may be some francophones only

M'vy

Area51 is in english

That means, they at least understand it a little

Jez

Germans are more likely to speak English than French people. Is that a fair generalization? ;-)

a little != a lot

M'vy

Yes, but my point is not here

Point is, we need to kick off the site first. See what is happening

See the proportion of the different languages on the site

Jez

9:09 AM

the what?

M'vy

Then we could decide on a better solution.

Jez

ah

my ideal would be 50/50.

because i'd like to see it be a site for advanced and beginners who know english

M'vy

Yes, but that's ideal

Jez

yeah so we post questions in the relevant language to get the proportion right :-P

M'vy

@Jez You are right, but that's not something we will have at the first shot.

Or it's very unlikely

Jez

9:11 AM

how about: should answers be in the same language the of the question? Here's what I wrote to myself a while back:

Respond to questions in the language they were asked. If the question was asked in a mixture of languages, you can respond in those languages used in the question.

M'vy

21

Q: Should we translate posts as a "community norm"?

"German Language & Usage" is the first site we created with significant activity in a non-English language. Many of the "problems" being discussed in meta seem to revolve around issues of accessibility; Not all users are fluent in both English and German. I wanted to get your thoughts about...

discussion translation

Jez

I'm guessing at some point, a localization interface will be introduced which gives a proper mechanism for translating these questions

So I'm not sure that putting the translation in the question body is a particularly good idea

M'vy

Given this question, good thing would be a tabbed system.

Like profiles on linkedin. You can just click on one tab to change language

Jez

imagine Linguistics

that will have 100 tabs :-)

M'vy

With a color section, you will quicly see if other language are available.

And we could add a page to the review section to look for missing translations.

Jez

9:16 AM

right, but at the moment that isn't there.

well

the tab thing isn't there

M'vy

Yes. But that's not mandatory for the site kick off

Jez

no, but it raises the question as to whether to do the translation of the questions now, or wait until something like that arrives

M'vy

Don't worry, Beta will last long enough

We need to work this out with the SEI team. That won't fit in a chatroom.

Jez

SEI?

M'vy

StackExchange.inc

Jez

9:30 AM

inc? lol

M'vy

Inc.

AProgrammer

12:01 PM

@Jez I don't bother with Java questions on SO. That doesn't mean they don't have a place there.

FL&U ended up as a merge of several propositions, it shouldn't be the intersection of them.

"In what language should we answer if the question is translated?" Assuming it is translated by the asker, in the prefered language for the answerer.

@Jez what language should the questions be written in?

(Tried to edit the previous and lost the edit...) Trying again.

"what language should the questions be written in?" In the order of preference, french french and english, english. But a well formulated english is preferable to a bad french that you have first to translate word by word in english to understand (I've had books like this, a nightmare)

Jez

> french french and english, english

huh?

AProgrammer

12:23 PM

There is a coma missing between the first french and "french and english".

Jez

hmm

what do you mean by 'french and english'?

AProgrammer

Question translated by the asker.

Jez

i don't get it; why would they translate it to English?

Stéphane Gimenez

5:46 PM

Hello. I was wondering, tags would be in French, right?

Hmm, on GL&U they are not.

…in German of course, I would not expect them to be in French… :-)

Brennan Vincent

6:32 PM

Est-ce qu'on sait quand le bêta va commencer?

Jez

6:55 PM

@BrennanVincent pas moi.

Brennan Vincent

7:08 PM

ok

Je pensais que ce serait automatique... eh bien non

Jez

que serait automatique?

Rebecca Chernoff

7:25 PM

I'm totally blanking on how to say something is almost ready, or coming soon. >_<

Jez

il arrive bientôt?

ou, il se passe bientôt

Rebecca Chernoff

In that case...

Il arrive bientôt!

q:

Jez

:-) c'est cool

best words French borrowed from English: cool, sexy, week-end, pique-nique (picnic)

Rebecca Chernoff

hehe

Brennan Vincent

7:39 PM

@Jez n'oublie pas chewing-gum

Jez

ah je n'ai pas entendu dire ça

Brennan Vincent

@Jez et je voulais dire que je pensais que la mise en place du bêta se ferait automatiquement dès que l'on aurait atteint 200 adhérents.

Jez

non ils doivent créer le logo et plusieurs choses je pense

Brennan Vincent

@Jez et il y en a beaucoup plus que ça encore! :) Barman, shampooing, e-mail, patchwork...

Jez

e-mail? tu veux dire 'courrier electronique'? ;-)

Brennan Vincent

7:43 PM

Franchement, personne ne dit ça

Jez

l'acad

ils ont leur courriers electroniques et leur nourriture vite

Brennan Vincent

D'accord, quelques vieux de 90 ans diraient "e-mail" si jamais ils s'en servaient.

Et puis les Québécois bien sûr.

Mais je peux t'assurer que le Français moyen ne dirait jamais "courrier éléctronique" ^^

Jez

j'ai cru que les Québecois disent 'courriel'?

Brennan Vincent

en fait je voulais dire "diraient courrier éléctronique" et pas "diraient e-mail" pardon

Oui c'est ça

Jez

ils doivent protéger leur langue; la langue française se meurt en amerique du nord apres tout ;-)

Brennan Vincent

7:50 PM

Euh, oui, t'as raison, mais c'est pas en disant "courriel" qu'ils vont la sauver.

Jez

je plaisante

Brennan Vincent

Mais c'est vrai en plus, ce que tu dis!

Le français québécois va mourir; mais je ne crois pas que ce soit évitable. Tant pis.

Jez

tu crois? je ne crois pas. Ils ne vont pas arrêter en parlent français...

Brennan Vincent

La plupart des jeunes Montréalais préfèrent l'anglais; le reste du Québec va forcément suivre.

Jez

vraiment? je n'ai pas connu

Brennan Vincent

7:58 PM

Mais les Québécois se battent tous les jours pour préserver leur langue, donc j'ai peut-être tort (espérons que c'est le cas!)

Jez

je ne me soucie pas de français québecois, mais si il leur donne envie de quitter du canada, je crois que c'est du mal

Brennan Vincent

Je n'ai pas compris

Jez

les sepratists sont aidés par le français quebecois

Brennan Vincent

ah ok

Jez

i always get the 'give envy of' thing wrong.

seems weird in English; if it makes you want something, in French it 'gives you envy of...'

Brennan Vincent

8:03 PM

no you said it right

but it should have been "quitter le canada"

not "quitter du canada"

Jez

I edited it ;-)

ah ok

Brennan Vincent

oh haha ok

ya des Bretons aussi qui veulent leur indépendence.

Tout comme au Québec, ça n'arrivera jamais

Jez

et les gallois et les écossais...

un bordel.

(ce pays)

Brennan Vincent

et les Alaskans et les Flamands

Jez

pas les Alaskans?

Brennan Vincent

8:05 PM

oh si

enfin, pas la plupart, bien sûr, mais il y en a

Jez

Sarah Palin?

Brennan Vincent

quelle horreur

Bref, il y a beaucoup de mouvements séparatistes dans le monde, et la quasi-totalité n'aboutiront jamais

Y compris celui du Québec.

Jez

nous sommes en bêta...

martiall

bon ben c'est parti :D

Brennan Vincent

^^

Jez

8:11 PM

;-)

poserons des questions de la phase Definition

martiall

Peut-on (doit-on ?) faire la différence entre les questions écrites en anglais et celle écrite en français ? avec un tag par exemple ?

M'vy

pas pour le moment

Anonymous

Could I post a "good on-topic example" question from the definition?

M'vy

mais on en parlera sur le méta

les "meta" tags sont a proscrire pour le moment.

Jez

@JeremyBanks oui un bon idée

Brennan Vincent

8:23 PM

*une bonne idée

:)

Benjol

C'est parti mon kiki!!!

Jez

kiki?

martiall

8:40 PM

kiki c'est un mot "mignon" souvent utilisé avec les enfants pour parler du pénis ^^'

Jez

erm

so @Benjol was talking about his penis...

martiall

not really "c'est parti mon kiki !!" is an expression like "let's go !!"

Jez

hmm

OK it seems we have a chatroom officially associated with the FL&U site: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1098/french-language-and-usage

Let's use that one.

room topic changed to French Language and Usage: General discussion for French Language and Usage - PLEASE USE OFFICIAL CHATROOM AT: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1098/french-language-and-usage (no tags)

Although I prefer the colour scheme of Area51 chatrooms ;-)

Stéphane Gimenez

10:28 PM

Personne ici, tout le monde est sur la bêta ? :-)

Jez

@StéphaneGimenez voici le salon officiel: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1098/french-language-and-usage

Stéphane Gimenez

Ah! Je me disais…

Transcript for

French Language and Usage