18 .. _translations_disclaimer:
27 Translation's purpose is to ease reading and understanding in languages other
28 than English. Its aim is to help people who do not understand English or have
29 doubts about its interpretation. Additionally, some people prefer to read
30 documentation in their native language, but please bear in mind that the
31 *only* official documentation is the English one: :ref:`linux_doc`.
33 It is very unlikely that an update to :ref:`linux_doc` will be propagated
34 immediately to all translations. Translations' maintainers - and
35 contributors - follow the evolution of the official documentation and they
36 maintain translations aligned as much as they can. For this reason there is
37 no guarantee that a translation is up to date. If what you read in a
38 translation does not sound right compared to what you read in the code, please
39 inform the translation maintainer and - if you can - check also the English
42 A translation is not a fork of the official documentation, therefore
43 translations' users should not find information that differs from the official
44 English documentation. Any content addition, removal or update, must be
45 applied to the English documents first. Afterwards and when possible, the
46 same change should be applied to translations. Translations' maintainers
47 accept only contributions that are merely translation related (e.g. new
48 translations, updates, fixes).
50 Translations try to be as accurate as possible but it is not possible to map
51 one language directly to all other languages. Each language has its own
52 grammar and culture, so the translation of an English statement may need to be
53 adapted to fit a different language. For this reason, when viewing
54 translations, you may find slight differences that carry the same message but
57 If you need to communicate with the Linux community but you do not feel
58 comfortable writing in English, you can ask the translation's maintainers