Decentralizing Language for Broader Decentralization

Good morning everyone,

I would like to discuss an important topic and ask for the community’s opinion. Currently, most platforms and dApps in the Polkadot ecosystem are available only in English.

Considering Polkadot’s vision of decentralization, do you think it would be beneficial to add more languages to various platforms, dApps, and even the polkadot.com website? Or is it better to keep English as the “centralized” language?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on:

  • The advantages and disadvantages of introducing more languages.

  • The impact on the decentralization and inclusivity of the ecosystem.

  • Any technical or logistical challenges that might arise.

Thank you for your feedback.

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GM,

I fully support the idea of introducing more languages into our ecosystem. As someone from Germany, I can confidently say that making tools and resources available in German would greatly enhance accessibility for users here. Many individuals are more comfortable engaging with products in their native language, which not only promotes better understanding and dot adoption but also serves as a crucial building block for fostering trust with the community.

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The translation of software, services, platforms, operating systems have been done collaboratively and voluntarily by open source communities since long ago. These communities wanted to have their language featured on the platform, so they did it, even small communities with minoritarian languages.

My two cents.

"Don’t ask what Polkadot can do for you, ask what you can do for Polkadot"

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Fully support this!

Having more language available = more accessibility and better experience

The ethereum foundation have this translation program that seems to work well

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This is a great proposal! As someone from a French-speaking community, I completely agree that introducing more languages would make the Polkadot ecosystem more inclusive and accessible to a wider global audience. Expanding to major languages like French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Vietnamese, and Swahili could significantly boost engagement across diverse regions.

The advantages are clear: it would break down language barriers, foster greater participation, and make decentralization truly global. While there may be some logistical and technical challenges in maintaining multilingual platforms, the benefits in terms of inclusivity and decentralization outweigh these concerns.

It’s important for Polkadot to be welcoming to everyone, regardless of their language. Let’s make the ecosystem accessible to all! :earth_africa::speech_balloon:

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hey folks, sorry I’m late for the discussion.

I’m advocating at every opportunity to include further languages in our ecosystem, even though sometimes we only serve an initial small audience.

To some in our community, content/dApps/interfaces/… in Portuguese, Spanish, or Korean might not have such a significant impact.
IMHO, being addressed in your native language sticks better to your attention than in English.

The realization is, however, a bit tricky.

  • Website: managing multi-lingual websites is an absolute disaster from a maintenance perspective, because of the many discrepancies with info, wording, phrasing, etc.
  • dApps: I assume that individual projects know best which language to include because they know from where their audience is coming from.
  • Content on X: there are a couple of regional teams, some are more organized (the Spanish & Brazilian) and others less so. When it comes to X, those teams need to be funded and vetted to get an official X-account (2FA with Yubi keys, cybersecurity standards,…) and follow the content guidelines.
  • Content on YT and other social medias: Many channels are fighting for themselves and need to work together to get their target audience’s attention. However, with the upcoming PR initiatives in North America, APAC and LATAM, more viewers will be coming (however fragmented, less in LATAM, but more so in APAC).

So what next? This decision is with the W3F and the realization would need the budget from OpenGov or a different pocket to pay the translation companies.

Thanks for further ideas on how to make our domain user-friendly.

Muchos saludos, grazie & ciao, danke & tschüs.

As a resident of a country whose language I don’t adequately read, write, or speak, I can’t help wondering if this is necessary. I get by with all sorts of non-Anglophone online texts just using Chrome’s built-in translation tool + DeepL when needed, and AI translation is increasingly fast and accurate.

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