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[Comment from a deleted post]
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davenicolette profile image
Dave Nicolette ن ✡ ☽

I think you should write in your native language.

First, even if your English skills are very good generally, there's a chance of making the sort of error that causes readers to turn away. "Should you created content," for example. When I write in Spanish, it is approximately correct but probably sounds very funny to a native speaker. I know I get the verb tenses wrong, and I don't have a feel for using the important small words like "se" and "a". I wouldn't want to risk being misunderstood or simply discounted because of errors like those. When speaking to a person, it's possible to clarify; when writing material that is read later by someone I don't know, any errors are likely to cause a negative reaction.

Second, as you mentioned in your post, there's a vast untapped market in Spanish-speaking countries. I think it's a great idea to serve that market. Most English-speaking professionals are unable to do so, even if they want to. One of the people commenting on this post is Albanian. That's a very different question than Spanish. Spanish is a widely-used world language, so you are in a more favorable position.

Third, with the growth of reasonably good automatic translation tools, interested readers can get the gist of your content even if the original version is written in a language they can't read. They will not "blame" the translation software for mistakes in the same way as they might blame a human. So, you aren't losing anything by writing in your native language. It might be helpful to include an English translation of the title or a couple of lines of summary information so that readers will know they should be interested in the article.

Fourth, the importance of "perfect" English for technical work is not as great as it once was. Many, many thousands of Indian H1B workers are in North America, Oceania, and western Europe. Their practical working language is English, but they speak many variants in many accents, with unique grammatical and structural divergences from "standard" English. Everyone is accustomed to it. In written material, I think it's still important to use correct structure and grammar, however.

Entonces, por favor escribe en español.

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erebos-manannan profile image
Erebos Manannán

I feel it's quite unlikely for someone to leave your tutorial/blog/whatever just because of a few simple grammar mistakes. Of course, if your English is so bad it takes real active effort to try and decipher what could you possibly mean that's a different thing. "Should you created content," e.g. is something I could easily not even notice unless someone points it out.

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squgeim profile image
Shreya Dahal

I don't think there really is a problem with simple grammatical errors or not getting some of the nuances of English correct in case of technical "blogging". The main reason being a lot of the audience are not native english speakers and they wouldn't even notice.

The main advantage of the internet is having an international audience and English is the de facto language for that.