Hacker News Reader

Comment by young_unixer | Hacker News Reader

Might be a good idea, but the multilingual argument doesn't convince me one bit. If this project is any useful, it won't be because of its multilingual part.

Any person worth reading in STEM fields already knows English, and I don't know why anyone would want to read Wikipedia in any language other than English.

I'm Latin American. I used the Internet in Spanish in my early teens before learning English, and it's a joke compared the English Internet. I don't even like English from a grammatical and phonetical point of view, but trying to cater to the non-English-speaking public seems like a waste of time in 2020. Just learn English already if you don't know it, it will be a much better use of your time than reading subpar material in another language.

View on HN

> Any person worth reading in STEM fields already knows English, and I don't know why anyone would want to read Wikipedia in any language other than English.

> Just learn English already if you don't know it

Some people are merely fine at English, or uncomfortable reading "casually" in their second/third languages...

It's actually not unreasonable for someone to want learning content in their native language. And there are loads of opportunities to try out new content when people in different places are writing content in different languages, with new angles and takes

For example the best intro to LaTeX is a book originally written in French[0].

And sometimes content just makes better sense in other languages because primary materials will be in that language (if you had the choice, would you rather read about the great Tokyo Fire in English or in Japanese?)

Sure, having access to English content is really important! But trying to have multilingual content is normal.

[0]: https://www.latexpourlimpatient.fr/

I often read wikipedia in several languages, because the differences between the articles sometimes offer almost as many bits of information as the commonalities.

What amazes me are the small-audience ones. For instance, who uses https://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaptblatt given that most of the native speakers of that dialect adhere to a religion which mandates that cell phones belong, not on one's person, but in the barn, and furthermore be used strictly for business?

(I did first learn about the Mennonite origins of the https://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Holland_Machine_Company from this wikipedia)

To the main point, I expect the lojban wikipedia to profit immensely from this project :-)

https://jbo.wikipedia.org/wiki/uikipedi%27as:ralju

> Any person worth reading in STEM fields already knows English, and I don't know why anyone would want to read Wikipedia in any language other than English

That's not the goal of Wikipedia. The goal is to make knowledge freely available to as many people as possible. That's fantastic that you were given the opportunity to learn English and have made the best of it. That is not everyone though. It's not reasonable to expect a farmer in Malaysia to know English or to learn it purely to take advantage of what's there.

> I used the Internet in Spanish in my early teens before learning English, and it's a joke compared the English Internet.

This project seems like one decent way to try and fix that.

On the contrary, Wikipedia is a wonderful multilingual resource.

English is one of my mother tongues but I regularly read Wikipedia in half a dozen other languages to improve my knowledge of them. Being able to cross-reference what you're reading to the English version of the text, even though it's not a literal translation, gives valuable context as well as perspective on how a topic is viewed by different language groups.

It's also often more useful than a dictionary for finding the name of a flower or fish in another language. Or even some topics that you wouldn't find in a dictionary at all.

Hello from Japanese internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com