A DAO is meant to be a collaborative environment among ALL the community, people from different languages, cultures and backgrounds.
One important aspect of this is a COMMON language for ALL discussions on the DAO Telegram and on the forums.
English is not the first language of many of us, but unfortunately it is most people's second language and most universal language, like it or not. I 100% agree with what @JoeD says in this regard.
I have felt excluded from the beginning. I tried to make an effort but it was just NOT possible to follow all the conversations happening in french. And I know that I am not the only one. It certainly feels like a closed club, for french people. Not a universal DAO welcoming everyone.
Actually I stopped trying to participate and have not contributed anything anymore, because of this. It is really difficult to be part on a community where everything is happening in a language you don't speak.
Maybe it is hard for the french speaking people to realize this because they've felt at home.
But the reality is that it is not practical, not productive and not cool to have conversations and discussions in different languages, because the conversation becomes fragmented.
Just look at the telegram. Zero activity on portuguese and spanish. Some activity in english for people who ask a question but really a few messages compared with the french activity, which can't really be followed by the rest of us. When I've made the effort to read and translate some messages, I've found that there are some really interesting discussions there that the rest of us are missing, because we can't speak french and follow them. Even if we make the effort, but honestly it is not feasible to translate 100s of messages on telegram just to catch up, each translation for each message does take time using the telegram translator (you have to translate each message independently).
Again, a DAO is supposed to be all about collaboration, integration, many people contributing from many different cultures. Without an official common language that is the most universal, which is english like it or not, that doesn't happen. and saying that everybody that doesn't speak french should make translation efforts in order to be a part, is really not the way to encourage participation and productive discussions.
I sincerely hope that people understand this.
