Re: Language of talks at LinuxTag
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 01:41:00PM +0200, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto wrote:
> What really puzzles me is that on linuxtag.de they qualify the exhibition
> as "EUROPEAN" and they have most of the talks in german. There is
> something that doesn't really work here. What is my understanding a
> European exhibition should be able to give out to every european citizen
> and not only to local ones.
In the _exhibition_ it is not that much of a problem - the largest part of
the booth personnel spoke both English and German, at some booths there were
also people who could speak a bit French, Italian, Dutch or Spanish, and you
can adapt your language choice to the particular visitor you are talking to
at your booth. This is plainly not possible when giving a talk to several
hundred people - you have to choose one language there.
Which common language do all these european citizens you mentioned above
speak? Everybody has his native language, but you cannot assume everybody
speaks the same foreign language (English) well enough. In Germany there is
a quite large part of the population that does not speak English at all or
only very basically, so following a talk in English is impossible for them.
>From my experiences in France, the same is valid for many French people. As
a conclusion, one can only try to get a sensible mixture between the most
common languages (which are German and English for LinuxTag and probably
French and English for LSM).
One could argue that the number of talks given in English should be higher
than it currently is (about 1/3 of all talks), but to provide more English
talks, there must be more submissions in English (please see my other mail
regarding this topic). Everybody is invited to submit a talk in English to
the next call for papers.
Regards,
Karsten
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