Why doesn't Hubpages allow questions to be written in foreign languages?

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   Nesbyteposted 12 years ago

   Why doesn't Hubpages allow questions to be written in foreign languages?
   
   I'm curious as to why Hubpages only allows hubs to be written in English. I know that a lot of hubbers are from places where English isn't the first language. I don't speak anything other than English (yet), but many people do, and probably want to write in other languages too. Is it simply because Hubpages can't afford to translate hubs in other langauges?

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2. 66

   relacheposted 12 years ago

   Simple policy questions like this are answered in the site FAQ,
   
   http://hubpages.com/faq/#english_only
   
   Also note that you are not supposed to ask questions here that solicit very short answers, http://hubpages.com/faq/#questions

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3. 0

   danielabramposted 12 years ago

   I think it is because the default language is English and people will get confused if your question is in another language.

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4. 0

   calculus-geometryposted 12 years ago

   While "a lot" of the users may speak English as a second language, a website needs to use a common language for all users in order to be useable.  If parts of the site were in Tagalog, Tamil, Urdu, Spanish, Finnish, Cantonese, or Basque, then people who don't speak those languages would not be able to use parts of the site. 
   
   Since the site is operated by Americans and targeted to readers in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and other English speaking nations, it makes sense that the common language be English. English is commonly spoken as a second language throughout the world, so having the site in English helps Hubpages content reach a wider audience.
   
   Translating the site's content into various languages would require Hubpages to buy more servers and significantly slow down the site.  Why would they do that when readers can use free online translation tools to render hubs in their own languages?  Google Translate isn't perfect, but it is free and easy to access.

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5. 0

   Garifaliaposted 12 years ago

   I think it's obvious and you need not look at the FAQS. Common sense tells me that if a site like this were in Italy, France or Germany, the people writing there would expect the site to be in their mother tongue. Unless of course, there was a special section on foreign language writing. To do that you need more staff (or volunteers) who can speak a great variety of languages to keep up with everyone.

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6. 79

   kittyjjposted 12 years ago

   Thank you for asking this question, Nesbyte.  I have been wondering the same question too.  I would really like to have this feature on Hubpages.  It will be useful when I want to show the Chinese characters to certain names, just like sometimes you would see names or phrases in languages other than English in wikipedia.org.  It will also give us the opportunity to show our hubs in more than one language.  Although it is true that there are free online translators, they don't really translate that well.

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   1. 80

      Nesbyteposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Hey kittyjj, I think you can actually use other languages in hubs, just as long as it's mostly English. So you could use the Chinese characters for some names without getting in trouble.

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   2. 79

      kittyjjposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Wow Nesbyte, thanks!  I didn't know that I could add Chinese characters to my hubs.  I just tested it, and it worked.  Cool!  Thanks again for letting me know.

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