[zorpner]

It was pretty inventive to use English-language as a reason to kill the post (it's not actually part of the guidelines, of course, it's just that almost no non-English posts get upvoted to the front page).

Clearly, it would have been straightforward to replace the link with an automated translation and allow the discussion to continue.

[perfTerm]

The thing is automatated translations are often awful to read. Hackernews is probably better off waiting for a native speaker to write up something about it because the article will maintain the interest of greater numbers of people

[dang]

It's not inventive. It has been a rule here since the beginning. I know that because pg told me.

The guidelines don't pretend to be exhaustive.