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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

Agree - there's strong precedent to English in the docs, and no localization branch presumably, so it's ok to reject if clearly explained. Something rubs me the wrong way with the question though, probably this:

> I can't tell what they [commits] contain until I open them one by one [because they are not in english]

I'd hope the diff does this for you, and I'd also hope you don't go solely on commit messages to see what they contain! If you're reviewing PRs you don't have to check each commit anyway. And I hope it's not true that if you're reading the commit msgs (instead of top-level change) and getting mad when they don't make sense.

It might be I misunderstand your question. At any rate, yes, ask for translation if you need it to be satisfied with the PR.

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It would be no different from me doing a PR with commit messages in German. Imo, that would be disrespectful towards the maintainers. Even if I put an English translation in the body of the commit message, only the German message is shown by default and it requires an extra step by anybody trying to go through the commits to see the translation or to find a particular commit.

I agree. I dont think the language is the issue, do you?

Yes, the language is not the issue, the issue is that it isn't English. I wouldn't send a PR to some repository with Persian commit msgs. It just doesn't make sense. If it was a bilingual repo or something like that it would have be fine though.

> Yes, the language is not the issue, the issue is that it isn't English.

Take it a step further.

The issue is that the value of the commit messages has been lost or degraded because they are not understandable to the maintainers and development team.

The same issue would (presumably) be raised if it were in German, Caesar cipher, English in random alternate UTF characters, formatted in some weird way that substantially reduced utility, or even just borderline unintelligible English.

(And if that’s _not_ the case, then this _is_ an issue on your end and I’d say you’re in the wrong. Ignore the rest.)

I’m guessing you’re worried about coming across as a dick because in your framing this is veering into language, culture, and all sorts of other things where some sensitivity should be employed. It doesn’t need to go there, though.

The focus is the utility the messages provide, that you value that utility, and that this does not provide that utility. In that sense it’s no different than asking someone to update a PR to include documentation updates, add comments to their code, or something similar.

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