করো: Translating Code to Other (Human) Languages, and Back Again | JS Conf 2019

Javascript runs on nearly any platform. Most languages can compile
to Javascript. It’s well-positioned to become the lingua franca of
programmers, with one problem: Like most programming languages,
Javascript is based on English. 89% of the world’s population
doesn’t speak any English. Many of those people can’t even read the
Latin script. If we want Javascript to be a lingua franca, we need
to ensure it is accessible to all people, regardless of their
native language. Let’s look at the barriers that non-native
speakers face when contributing to OSS Javascript projects and what
it would take to remove them entirely, so that two developers could
collaborate without speaking the same language. We will see what
techniques Javascript can borrow from other languages by taking a
look at করো (koro), a project which adds Bengali support to the Go
compiler. And, we will learn enough about compilers and character
encoding to answer the eternal question: “Could we do this in
Javascript?”