Zweisprachige Tags oder zweisprachig angezeigte Tags - bilingual tags or bilingually displayed tags

Question

Das Problem

Auf German Language Meta SE wurde schon verschiedentlich über die Sprache der Tag-Namen auf der "German Language SE"-Haupt-Site diskutiert. Dabei gibt es ein Dilemma:

• Nicht alle Benutzer von German Language SE verstehen (gut) Englisch. Rein englischsprachige Tag-Namen sind somit nicht für alle verständlich.
• Nicht alle Benutzer von German Language SE verstehen (gut) Deutsch. Rein deutschsprachige Tag-Namen sind somit auch nicht für alle verständlich.

Fürs das Taggen beim Verfassen und beim Bearbeiten von Fragen lässt sich das Problem umgehen, in dem Benutzer, die beide Sprachen hinreichend beherrschen Tag-Synonyme anlegen oder vorschlagen.

Das hilft den Lesern einer Frage nicht, es sei denn sie gucken für jeden Tag in der Sprache, die sie nicht verstehen dessen Synonyme oder potenziell zweisprachig gehaltene Beschreibung (excerpt und Wiki) an, was nicht praktikabel ist.

Eine mögliche Lösung: zweisprachig angezeigte Tags

Würden die Tags zweisprachig angezeigt, könnten auch Leser die nur einer der Sprachen mächtig sind, profitieren. Dazu könnte SE echt zweisprachige Tags implementieren, wie ich in Allow bilingual tags vorgeschlagen habe. (Dass das passiert, ist eher unwahrscheinlich.) Solche Zweisprachige Tags ließen sich aber auch emulieren, in dem man ein Feature wiederbelebt, das es bei Stack Overflow Documentation gab: "Friendly tag names". Da dieses Feature auch für nicht Sprach-Fokusierte Stack-Exchange-Seiten (und insb. auch für Stack Overflow, SuperUser und ServerFault) einen Nutzen haben könnte, sehe ich da bessere Chancen.

Ein solcher Tag hätte dann zwar immer noch den (technischen) Namen frageworter (oder fragewoerter?) oder interrogatives, würde aber z.B. als "interrogatives — Fragewörter" angezeigt.

Was meint ihr dazu?

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The Problem

There have been various discussions on German Language Meta SE about the language of tag names on the German Language SE main site. There's a dilemma about that topic:

• Not all users of German Language SE understand English (at all or well enough). Purely English-language tag names are thus not comprehensible for all of them.
• Not all users of German Language SE understand German (at all or well enough). Purely German-language tag names are thus not comprehensible for all of them.

For the tagging when authoring or editing questions, this problem can be circumvented by having users who know both languages sufficiently well create or suggest appropriate tag synonyms.

But that won't help readers of questions, as long as they don't look up the synonyms or the (potentially bilingual) tag description (excerpt and wiki) for each tag name they don't understand, which isn't practical of feasible.

A possible solution: bilingual(ly displayed) tags

If tags would be displayed in both languages, readers only understanding one of them could profit from them, too. To achieve that, SE could implement truly bilingual tags, as I've suggested in Allow bilingual tags. (It seems unlikely that that will happen, though.) Such bilingual tags could though also be emulated by reviving a feature that was part of Stack Overflow Documentation: "Friendly Tag Names". As this feature could also prove useful for Stack Exchange sites not focused on languages (and especially also for Stack Overflow, SuperUser and ServerFault), I think this might have better chances.

Such a tag would still have the (technical) name frageworter (or fragewoerter?) or interrogatives), but would be displayed as e.g. "interrogatives — Fragewörter".

What's your opinion on that?

Answer 1

Indeed there has been a lot of discussion on the language tags should be in. The decision to have them in English was made at a very early stage of this site's existence, then there were clearly outlined reasons why we chose English over German.

Tags by now are well established and users who subscribe to any of them are used to them. It may not be a good idea to change this now. Nevertheless I do understand your concerns, especially when it comes to the understanding of tags used in another language.

This is why we do have quite a long list of tag synonyms. We tried to have German counterparts as a synonym to the English master tag. This leads to exactly the effect you suggest, i.e. whenever we type in the German expression the system will automatically display the English tag, if it exists:

In case it does not exist, well, then just create it! If you have enough reputation (150) create an English tag you wish to have. If you have more that 1250 rep you can then suggest the German original as a tag synonym to have it displayed as shown above. If you rep is lower then please ask here in Meta for help.

Only just keep in mind that the tags you create are useful, i.e. please do not add tags that will only rarely if at all be used by future questions.

For quickly reading the German translation of an English tag the editable-by-community tag info is the appropriate place. It was suggested to always have the German counterpart in the first line of a tag info so that on hovering it will be displayed in a text box:

If a translation is missing to a tag everybody having achieved the privilege to create tags is welcome to also create or edit a tag wiki which is accessible from the tags page (click edit after hovering over a tag).

Also see Let’s create or improve tag wikis – but how?