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Comment by gear54rus | Hacker News Reader

English obviously. It is quite far fetched, but I'm just tired of seeing countless hours wasted because the numbers aren't localized properly or RTL breaks layout. It's superfluous, people should have their native tongue and should learn English as means of international communication.

Also imagine encoding problems which are also great PITA going away with ascii-only technologies.

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I'd prefer to take your comment as a push for a common language across the planet.

In other words, remove the need for i18n before removing i18n.

I'd start even simpler. ISO 8601 for dates. Metric for measurements. One way of writing numbers (I like the programming convention, with dot being the decimal place separator). It would already simplify many things, leading to efficiency gains across many segments of economy.

With the way the population is going we’re more likely to use mandarin or Hindi as an international language.

Mandarin has the most first language speakers, but English is far ahead for second language speakers.

Western civilization needs to prevail somehow too, yes. The tech world is still English-first IMO and the tech drives everything else nowadays because it provides enormous advantages.

This is some of the most self-centered reasoning I've seen on HN. Everyone should learn English to reduce your workload.

It's almost a caricature of the stereotypical redneck who has never left the country and gets mad when they overhear someone speaking Spanish at Fiesta, muttering "but this is America" under their breath.

> It's almost a caricature

It IS a caricature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Maybe some see it as self-centered, but I find it resonates with me strongly. Now that we're a global civilization, life would be much simpler of global-scale things get standardized. Like, if metric system was adopted everywhere. If people used ISO 8601[0] instead of whatever is their random way of writing time down. If people used one well-defined number format. Etc.

IMO what's really being self-centered is - when dealing with international things like the Internet - to insist on making everyone else's life harder for the sake of whatever random local tradition you grew up with.

And I say that as European with plenty of weird localized ways of writing dates, numbers, currencies, etc. Ways which I abandoned pretty much as soon as I got exposed to computing.

[0] - https://xkcd.com/1179/

Mmmmm, lexicographically sortable. I prefer the RFC3339 profile, but YES to ISO-8601 for anything meant to be readable by a human. It's loony how many different formats are in use on the wire and internally in programs.

How is it self-centered though? There's not 'self' here. My profession (IT) is not the only profession that requires translations. They are required everywhere and so what I am saying is applicable everywhere. My nationality is not in question either, because I am not a native speaker. How is that self centered?

> How is that self centered?

"I find it to be too much work, and I derive no value from it, so we shouldn't do it."

Hey, I'm actually arguing your case :). I find sticking to local customs to be self-centered, because "why should I change to accommodate other people?".

It's self centered because you have already crossed that bridge.

I'd say sometimes not crossing that bridge, which leads to a common meeting place, and instead insisting that everyone caters to your side is self-centered, but I just recognized that the exact same argument can be used against my position that most websites should be usable without JavaScript... Oh the irony.

For years the computing world had the position that if it couldn't be expressed in ASCII7 then 'fuck you'. Of course might makes right and all that but this goes beyond a couple of diacriticals. Finally with UTF-8 and i8n we now have a somewhat level playing field where for those that want we can exchange information.

The segregation between these language spheres on the web is incredibly effective. For instance, the Spanish and the English web rarely link to each other (and if they do it is most likely a link from the Spanish part to the English part). Ditto with many other language pairs.

A single world language is a nice thing to strive for, but I don't see why it would have to be English by default, even though that's what it probably will end up being anyway.

The French have always felt that their language is somehow special and that it should be given preference in the EU, and until not all that long ago it was the 'official' language in quite a few European countries by virtue of being the language of the wealthy. For the longest time the Dutch driving license still had the words 'permis de conduire' on it for that reason (and not as a convenient translation for any French police that might take an interest in the document).

French as a second language was the default, English a distant third. That's all changed now, but it is no different if it is imposed rather than of free will.

So if you want to go to that common meeting place that's fine, but if you're forced to go that common meeting place because a bunch of tech bozos have decided your culture, script and language don't matter because they have already mastered English because it was a requirement for them to be employed then that isn't.

And if I didn't it would be empty words. You just can't win :)

Google translate! I've seen more than one conversation between people that do not speak each others language through automated translators and even though the results are imperfect and sometimes humorous it does work to the point that it amazes me. It also gets it spectacularly wrong at times, but still. So far no intergalactic wars have broken out over this.

Good luck with that.

Do you speak one language only? Even one additional language would change your perspective here. You won't be able to translate all that properly into one language.

A people's language is a window into their culture and their being. Each language (and even dialect) have their own insightful and delightful quirks.

I could only lamely elaborate here on own experience.

> Each language (and even dialect) have their own insightful and delightful quirks.

Sure. But you won't be able to enjoy it on a random website. Most of the time the translation quality is mediocre.

No I speak Russian and English. Russian is native.

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