My website ronscf.com is entirely written in Portuguese, my native language. I am against Linguistic Imperialism and against all kinds of Imperialism; this includes the Imperialism imposed today by the United States of America on the world. The country where I was born and live, Brazil, suffered from linguistic imperialism in 1758, when the infamous Marquis of Pombal banned the most spoken language on the coast of Brazil, Old Tupi, a native language of Brazil, beautiful, powerful, and full of personality, which was unfortunately turned into a historical curiosity. Portuguese, in turn, became by decree the mandatory language throughout the Brazilian territory.

I currently use Argos Translate to translate the pages into the other 15 languages available on my website. After the machine translation made completely on my machine, that is, locally, I make spot corrections in the English and Spanish translations, and for other languages I correct flaws using an online translator. Argos isn't perfect, but it's open source and I appreciate that.

In case you are reading something on my site and it seems confusing in your native language, I apologize and ask you to keep in mind what was stated above. I want to make it clear to you, visitor, that I am not a polyglot; I wish I were, but I am not.

Why don't I write in English like everybody else?

English is today's lingua franca. Did I choose this? No. By the time I was born, English was already the world's lingua franca. I was educated in Portuguese, learned English and a little Spanish, and I do not feel comfortable writing in any of the three languages. I have difficulty writing and even more difficulty socializing, and after writing a text I feel exhausted, just like after a party. That's why I prefer to write in Portuguese, it's the language I speak daily. I invite you to write on your site in your native language as well: leave English to Anglophones and spread your native language across the web. A web mostly in English is very monotonous and lacks personality. Use automatic translation or ask your visitors to send you translations if your content isn't in English. Speaking of which, do me a favor and send me a translation or translation correction if any translated text on my site contains inaccuracies. In advance, thank you very much.

If you are interested in implementing automatic translation on your website, visit my site's repository and take a look there, don't be shy, visit my site on Codeberg. Obviously, you could simply use a translation plugin in your browser. I advise against it. Real-time translators prioritize translation speed and fail miserably to capture the context, tone, and cultural nuances of texts.

Maintaining 15 translations for each page of your website may seem like redundancy, and it really is. But if we stop to think about the positive effects of internationalizing your content, a few extra Kibibytes won't make that much difference in the end. There are some tech folks who value small and minimalist websites, I respect that, but I believe it is more important to convey my messages and ideas in a correct and intelligible way to as many people as possible. I believe that in doing so, I can help build a more just, egalitarian, and respectful world.

Finally, I'm going to address something that really bothers me, especially in web technology spaces. On most websites, forums, and circles, people expect you to speak English and even set rules to prohibit the use of languages other than English. This behavior is limiting and exclusionary, causing people from all over the world who haven't mastered English, no matter how talented they are or what incredible ideas they have, to be segregated from common debate spaces.