[Doc-SIG] Translating sample programs in documentation

[Nick Coghlan]

On 17 April 2018 at 03:27, Xuan Wu <fromwheretowhere.service at gmail.com> wrote:
> IMO it's almost impossible to verify if this practice is generally better
> for beginners or not, without actually trying it out in limited scope, like
> the official tutorial.
>
> To clarify, I'm not pushing other languages to do the same.

While I'm hesitant to suggest this (since I'm not sure how much extra
work it would be, or if it's even practical at all), would it be
feasible to provide two different variants of the Chinese tutorial
translation, one that keeps the original "online open source
collaboration defaults to English for historical reasons" examples,
and another that also translates the code comments, variable names,
and string content in the examples?

One of the strengths of Python as a programming language is that it
not only enables sharing between programmers around the world, but
also between Python programmers and experts in other domains. So even
beyond the question of which is easier to learn, if someone is
preparing something like a Jupyter notebook, and their primary
audience is folks that don't speak English as their preferred
language, then it may make sense to use as many native terms as
possible, and only use English for the Python keywords. A fully
translated tutorial (examples and all) helps make that capability
clearer for everyone, not only beginners.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia