Why is this announcement in German?

[RavensFan]

I saw there was a new Diadem Idea Exchange board, so I went there to see what's been posted.  At the top, I see an announcement in German saying:

"Bitte verfassen Sie Forums-Beiträge in englischer Sprache. Damit ermöglichen Sie internationalen Benutzern, sich an den Diskussionen zu beteiligen. Falls der Aufwand nicht zu groß ist, werden deutsche Beiträge ins Englische übersetzt."

So I went to Google to translate and got:

"Please write your forum posts in English. This will enable international users to participate in the discussions. If the effort is not too large, German contributions are translated into English."

Great.  That makes sense.  But why would you announce that in what is already an English board?  And if there is a need to announce that in German, then why wouldn't you post an announcement in all the other languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, ....?  And why only on the Diadem Idea board?

[DRock · Accepted solution]

Hi Ravens Fan!

While DIAdem continues to have a rapidly growing customer base in the Americas, DIAdem's more established customer base is in Germany and the Central European Region.  The reasoning for this is simple: DIAdem was originally created, marketed, and sold only in Germany.  We placed this message at the top of the DIAdem Idea Exchange so that any of our German-speaking customers coming to the board would know to post their Ideas in English to promote understanding and participation by our International audience (as our translation indicates).

I realize that the Idea Exchange is already in English, but so is our Technical Support Forum, yet many of our German customers still post in their native language (and receive support in German, accordingly).  We try to be as accomodating as possible.

Would it have helped you / been less confusing had there been an equivalent English explanation in the Announcements section? 

P.S. I know that you're one of our most passionate and active LabVIEW users - does this mean you're also a DIAdem user?

[RavensFan]

Thanks for the message.  That certainly makes sense.  Seeing an English version right next to it would have helped.

I am not currently a Diadem user.  Most of my work has involved machine control and communication applications, and not much with heavy data acquistion and analysis.  So far I don't feel like I've needed the capabilities that the Diadem package has.  But I do like to peruse the other boards even for the packages I don't have and use to be able to keep up to date on any new developments.