I empathize with you. But I reject that it should fall upon Germany to learn English for your convenience or that the task of translating their texts should fall upon them. I guess I reacted (perhaps poorly) to GP's statement that Germany "really should start documenting their tech in English" which to me sounded rather preposterous.

Germany already learned English. There is approximately no-one in Germany under 30-40 who doesn't speak a little English.

How does Germany ingest technologies from outside Germany? Is all tech in DE home-grown?

Authors addendum: This post was a mistake on my part. Please downvote this post. Thank you! I would rather have a retract option, but there is none here on HN.

Original post:

Apologies to you on behalf of people who made you feel uncomfortable.

Full disclosure:

I had (still have?) negative biases/sentiments/stereotypes towards Americans: being ignorant, self-absorbed, reckless, careless etc.

And this almost made me have a knee-jerk reaction to the expressed desire to make the content in question available in English. As if I am tired of you Americans Americanizing everything you touch[2]. This sentiment is also expressed in Ramstein's song "Amerika"[3].

But that's why it is called a "stereotype". I shouldn't stereotype a population of +300 m out of a small sample size (that includes YouTube/Twitter too). I lose a lot of potential good/bad experiences if I continue to do that. And even if, for the sake of the argument, 90% match my silly stereotype, I still should have an optimistic modus operandi. Pessimism/cynicism is a counterproductive trait. You should be an optimist[1].

But putting all that aside, what makes you think that the inquirer is an American? He could be a French person knowing Japanese and Russian besides English.

Anyhow, we shouldn't follow protectionist policies. Nothing good comes out of that. We should be thankful/appreciative to people who are willing to share content with others (open source, creative commons, etc.).

References:

[1] Algorithms to Live By

[2] https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2021/01/04/report-plays...

[3] https://youtu.be/Rr8ljRgcJNM

Edit: for the people who take issue with my post here: I would appreciate a feedback on why my post is counterproductive/bad. Thank you!

I am not sure you meant to answer to my comment, because I didn't mention feeling uncomfortable, and didn't take any guess about anyone's nationality. Also I'm not American, I edited my comment to clear that up.

You're right, benhurmarcel. My input here has come to nothing, and it wasn't a good input to begin with. I wish there was a retract option.