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I've found a non-English answer to this question. My initial reaction was to comment, asking for translation, and then flag for moderation (regardless of language, it looked poor).

But I couldn't really find any reference in the help-center, that would specifically state that questions and answers should be in English. There are points about grammar and punctuation, but not explicitly language.

So, if Travel SE is English-only, what is the best way to handle non-English questions and answers, so that new users do not feel disrespected?

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  • If you feel like it, you can try to translate online to see what it is about. But often you see by the way that the post in copied/pasted that spam or other non answer is likely.
    – Willeke Mod
    Commented Jul 25, 2015 at 20:36

2 Answers 2

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The person should be reminded that the TSE operates in English; then flag. Do not edit the OP's question. According to Jeff Atwood, you are also invited to translate it and provide your own answer. It's not plagiarism to translate and to apply transliteration.

Update 2 August 2015

The downside can manifest when somebody makes a total dog's breakfast of it and produces English that is palpably inaccurate...

Is it possible to travel from North America to South America via train, excluding the Darién gap?

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This has long been discussed on Meta Stackexchange and had always came back with please use English only unless the site is specifically in a different language or the sites dedicated like Stackoverflow in Portuguese.

If you want to look at the policies set forth on Stackexchange you can probably go through the posts and blogs referred to on Meta:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=non-english

It also discusses the issues of asking questions, commenting, and answering in languages other then English.

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  • Thanks! I didn't realize there is Meta for SE in general...
    – Rafal
    Commented Jul 28, 2015 at 4:15

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