The idea of a separate space for German seems odd. In my experience Germans speak English better that do Americans. Probably they have better discipline with grammar.
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As others, I like the proposal. It is a good compromise and I can help to translate French to English.
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I agree with Milanās proposal.
See my new post in Boucle fichiers as a demonstration of the automatic translation tool DeepL, from French to English.
Now, I propose to open a new discussion: āShould Fortran Discourse be open to languages other than Fortran?ā No, donāt worry, itās a joke! 
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This may be a bit unrelated but I will get it out of my system here: it really annoys me that iOS autocorrects Fortran to FORTRAN 
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I believe @milancurcic proposal strikes the right balance. I think it will be quite interesting to see more non-English speaking Fortran users here. Iād be curious to know what other resources they have available to them, and if this is one of very few, we certainly wouldnāt want to turn them away.
Kudos to all for the civil discussion, compromise and consensus. Iām very happy to see this community functioning and communicating well.
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The only french forum about Fortran that I know is:
There is only a few new discussions each month. Nothing comparable with our buzzy Discourseā¦ 
Concerning the discussion, itās true that itās a pleasure to see that we can think and elaborate something together! As human beings, we often forget that we, as an individual, can not see all the faces of a problem (you know: light is made of particles! No itās waves! No itās both a wave and a particle! When finally itās neither waves nor particlesā¦) So itās important to be conscious of that when we tell to other what we think. And to listen to each other. Then something can emerge from the kaleidoscopeā¦
For example, I was not conscious that translation tools had become really usable in a forum until @billlong suggested we use such tools. I was first skeptic but convinced after some experiments.
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Is that a ādictionaryā thingy like what one sees with web browsers on other platforms?
And is there a way to feed that back to the maintainers of iOS info base to accept Fortran as the name?
I went ahead and added the Language section in the Welcome post. Let me know if youād like to change or add anything to it.
As with everything else, weāll evaluate how it works as we go, and adjust course as needed.
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That would be niceā¦ I meant when I am typing e.g. on a messaging service the suggested autocompletion/autocorrection from Fortran to FORTRAN is always there.
Perhaps their AI is so good that they know that I did unfortunately wrote in a publication FORTRAN90 (very sorry) some years ago 
.
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Whatās worse is when people autocorrect to āFORTRANā.
I see this often. Example: I email a colleage telling them about the Fortran book I wrote. They forward the email to their colleague and say āCheck it out, Milan wrote a FORTRAN book.ā
I think the name āFORTRANā is hardcoded deep in the lowest levels of peopleās firmware.
But it makes sense. If you havenāt learned about the name change with Fortran 90, itās natural to think that āFortranā is misspelled.
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That was a beautiful question and pretty much loved most of the decisive solutions.
However, before spending much time in this topic I think is nice to have a realistic view on the topic. I cannot think of a person in need of Fortran help that doesnāt have the minimum level to open a discussion in a forum. Being realistic, a person in need of Fortran help would be first a Fortran user, which most probably would be at least an undergrad in science/engineering. And I again cannot think on any undergrad in any part of the world doing science/engineering that doesnāt have a minimum English level to ask for help. I donāt even think that person would be able to go through the documentation and understand that they can ask in their own language.
On the other hand, if any of the 0.0ā¦01% (of course this is just a personal estimate) of people in need of Fortran help canāt express her/himself in English I think it should be allowed to write in her/his own language and people try to do their best to help. In that case, Iāll be happy to help with any Spanish translation.
(Sorry for contributing with this rather nihilistic post but found it an important idea that was missing.)
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@iarbina welcome to the forum! Yes, I agree with you, and thanks to Google Translate and other such services, I personally think it is not too much to ask people who do not speak English to use them to translate. But others felt quite strongly about this, so the compromise hopefully works for everybody.
Welcome @iarbina,
good point! That person need a minimal understanding of the āWelcome to Discourseā! But reading a foreign language can be easier than writing, and writing easier than talking. The more you practice something, the more natural it becomes. And on the net, we read more often than we write, and write more often than we talk.
I agree that such situations will probably be rare and that this discussion is rather a matter of principle. If we had that great discussion, itās probably because in a community principles matter.
Thank you and welcome, @iarbina! Iām really happy about the overwhelming support and openness by this community.
First, letās assume youāre correct. Thereās no practical problem then with welcoming other languages, as there wonāt be such threads.
Second, I donāt think you have a realistic view on this (and neither do I). We only have our perspectives. In my Fortran class (3rd year undergrad program in meteorology in 2006 in Serbia), majority of students were comfortable reading and understanding English, but not writing it. Maybe itās different in 2020. I donāt know. Learning and using programming languages is orthogonal to learning to write a spoken language, as @vmagnin pointed out, so we canāt assume that a programmer also speaks English.
And even if they canāt read the Welcome message and our stance on language: English-speakers who do read it may feel more excited to engage in an open and inclusive community. Itās also important to state it for English-speakers so that they donāt inadvertently shut down foreign-language topics.
Also consider a Fortran user that is only barely comfortable with writing English. It can be intimidating for a newcomer to post for the first time in an established community. Our message and attitude about the language can make a difference about how such userās first impression and whether theyād feel encouraged to post or not, in English or otherwise.
We need to think long term. Fortran is losing users every day. Fortran is also being predominantly taught not in the US, but elsewhere in the world. Many countries where Fortran is being taught are developing countries. We are fighting for Fortran and thus fighting for every new user we could get. @vmagnin also correctly pointed out SEO. Not restricting to English language may in the long term improve Fortranās visibility around the world.
Openness to other languages is directly related to diversity of thought and experience. I think this is important and will only help us improve. We all benefit from it. When @certik and I appeared as guests on the Open Source Directions podcast, one of the questions was how we aim to foster diversity. Welcoming other languages is just one way toward that effort. Restricting to English would not help it.
I agree with @vmagnin that this is more a matter of principle. Principles matter. The message we send out into the world matters. We have influence on others.
But these principles matter in practice also. In the future if and when we decide to apply for NumFOCUS or some technology grant, things like this will be measured and considered.
Regarding the concern of this leading to a fragmented, multi-language forum, we are not arguing for creating that. We simply argue for not shutting down the rare non-English topic.
Again, any suggestion for improving our message to newcomers is welcome.
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Thanks @vmagnin and @milancurcic for your reply.
I cannot but agree 100% with your words @milancurcic. If Iām here is because I saw the Open Source podcast you had few month ago and just hearing the words āFortranā and āOpen Source projectā made my day. And of course, diversity in an Open Source project is mandatory, and if language diversity helps Iām on it. I just wanted to make that point.
Anyways, kudos to the idea.
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I think everyone nowadays could somehow write in the English language. So for the time being it should be in English as it is a more universal and international language.
In case, he could use translation software to write in English.
In an extreme case, he could just point out that he is not comfortable in the English language and could simply post in his native language.
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