I've listened to every Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange podcast that I can recall, and I'm aware that there was a conscious decision to make Stack Overflow (at least initially) an English-only programming question site. I'm also aware they've now expanded to have a Portuguese site, etc.

I'm OK with this decision (in fact I think it was a wise decision), and I personally have no desire to alter this however... I'm curious how (and or if) this is actually enforced?

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Through community moderation.

We flag anything in a foreign language as off-topic. Or some kind soul translates the post to English, one or the other.

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    I'm guessing the volume must be fairly low then as I've never come across any that I can recall. – scunliffe Apr 22 '14 at 22:51
  • Indeed, it doesn't happen all that often. – Martijn Pieters Apr 22 '14 at 22:51
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    @scunliffe If it happens, the question is usually down- and closevoted very quickly. Unless you browse by newest questions and refresh often, the chances of seeing a non-english question are probably close to zero... – l4mpi Apr 23 '14 at 8:56
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    Well, consensus seems to be that translation is fraught with peril, of questionable worth due to the OP being unable to use english, and generally making community moderation difficult... it's certainly a radical change of about the same order as simply replacing the post with your own. See meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/262014/… too. – Deduplicator May 7 '15 at 17:50

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