But…how do you know this is the reason for an empty profile?
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I don’t. It’s speculation, as in so many threads here. No one knows why people do things or don’t do things apart from the people themselves. A bit like other people’s marriages. 
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Yes, in general I can agree that the overpower of English is quite regrettable. At the same time, it just is the language which is most widely used around the world, in form or another.
If people wrote their profiles in other languages, it would more likely mean the other users wouldn’t understand them. And then they would use services like Google translator. However, the translator works well mainly for major languages and especially for English translations. For example, if I wrote something in Finnish and it was translated into Chinese or even German, it could become a mess. Every time I need to translate something, I translate it into English since it just works best. With very rare languages it could become completely illegible. (Of course it is possible to translate something first into English, then into your mother tongue - this can work - but is it common knowledge around the globe?)
The translation would become sender’s duty and it could cause stress and frustration for not knowing for sure what the profile actually says. Of course there can be interpretation problems now too as not everybody is fluent writer or they have used translating programs. However, it is still a translation made by the user themselves and it depends on them how far they have gone to translate it as correctly as possible.
What comes to cards, no one has said the cards should be written in English only. So people are free to use in the private communication any language they wish to. (Hurray for that! 
) I do hope the user’s languages would be somehow more obvious, it is easy to miss that information. If I recall right, they might not be visible at all in the email with the ID and address.
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You can see the users languages in the info you get about them when you hit “send a postcard”. You don’t need to visit the profile. And that info is also in the mail you receive 
so if that info is important to you you can find it immidiately!
I’d suggest you should give Deepl a shot when you translate something. For me it is way better than Google because it’s better regarding grammar. But I haven’t used it for translating “rare languages”. But japanese to german for example (also written in japanese letters) worked just fine.
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And @Lyra34 (thanks for Deepl hint!)
You are right about translator of google, it uses neural networks learning and English as base language. And for rare languages it uses triple chains: like from Finnish to Russian it will use Finnish -> English -> Russian (so I use yandex translator in this case or translate everything to English while searching separate words on multitran.ru)
I think I saw some profiles automatically translated with weird wishes, which was obviously a wrong translation (also many demanding and rude profiles might be because of automatic translation…) 
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Good point, being a native English speaker I didn’t think about problems translating between rarer languages
I still think the insistence on English for profiles is a bit over zealous though. It could just be recommended that English is used. After all, if you got a profile you really couldn’t understand you could still send a card. It would be a bit like when you get a blank profile.
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I think part of the reason profiles should be in English is for moderation. If a profile is written in a language no one of the Postcrossing team speaks, it’s harder for them to find out if it’s violating the rules.
Anyway, in my opinion, if you want to communicate with people, you should use a language you both share. But that’s my opinion and totally subjective.
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I personally like that there is “the language” that is supposed to be used here.
And that everyone in their profile can list the languages they understand.
What do you do with the cards which has so unclear hand writing, that you don’t know what to write in the translator? Do you print the translated message if you like to read it again?
What if I write a message with a language that is not in translator? Just to keep the culture alive. Isn’t it better to tell about that culture in a language the other one understands?
What if the person suffers from MS, like Xute stated, and they cannot even type Thank you, or speech to text -it, but they should translate cards written in some strange language. How do they write this?
I can’t think of a situation, when intentionally using a language the receiver doesn’t understand, would be nice.
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I have this problem with languages I know too
Your point is totally correct for uncalled writing in another language, with that I guess everyone agrees. Expressing the longing for different languages is completely separate from that.
From my experience every Dutch person who can write me a postcard in their native language is very happy about it. But of course if I didn’t ask for it, I’d be confused at best
EDIT: With languages it’s tricky thing: majority of users in postcrossing speak German, majority people in the world speak Chinese or Hindi, the most common official language for countries is Portuguese…
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What you’d do, is post some of the script (having scanned it without revealing the ID number) here: Need help translating a postcard you've received?
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Is it (completely separate)? If the profiles would be in different languages, then I get an uncalled writing in another language when I get their address. Or are you suggesting forming language groups? Please no.
I think, here it is not a question about majority, or most common language, or dying culture, it’s the question of whether one can respect the rules, or do think they have the right to do what they want.
Already members can mention other languages in their profile, so it’s not strictly only English.
And here is forums for different languages
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Yes, it is possible, but not for everyone.
What I find confusing is, with empty hurrays, typed/copied messages etc. we must think it might be someone with a disability, and not possible to type two words. But when sending card, or writing a profile, suddenly it’s not important whether they understand the profile they get, or even the card they get 
I usually have no problem with writing styles, as long as it’s a language I know.
Edit. I add this here, even maybe it’s obvious, but I’ve seen profiles with two languages.
So, if you want your profile to be your own language, put it in addition to the English version of your profile.
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Yes, I think what happened in this discussion is that your absolutely justified opinion about passive-aggressive writing in language which is not official or listed between spoken languages of recipient (I think it’s similar to situation when people send antiwish or phobia postcard just in spite) – perceived as a very strict opinion about “no other languages are welcomed”.
Parts of profiles can be in other language if you address certain countries users as long as there is at least a sentence in basic language for postcrossing or any machine translator - English. Language community are cool too, and writing in different language IF requested is okay by you too, right?
I agree that it sounded like double standards with empty hurray - empty profile comparison. My disability argument was a bit too harsh, I must say, I apologize for that, I never think it’s disability by default, just think it’s technical hiccup. For me it feels weird to start trying to climb inside another random person head looking for reasons why. S**t happens, I just move along and read next hurray which might be long and cheerful and compensate for monthly quota of empty ones.
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Yes, of course 
And when a profile is in English and another language, I always try to read the other language as well. So I am not in any ways against other languages, but I don’t want to support writing strange languages to people, and assuming they have the means to get it translated.
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That the majority of people in the world speak Chinese is pretty much irrelevant in this context. Context is everything. The same goes for the majority of users being German - most people don’t speak or write German - the language most used, globally, as first or second language, is English. I haven’t had a single card written in Chinese or German and only one IIRC written in Polish. Of course I understand that with my ‘only’ 231 cards received, that may not be a representative sample, but it seems representative to me!
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to that.
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I would argue which language would win in being most common with postcrossers who speak as carriers, probably, Chinese still - 170k+ postcrossing members are from China and Taiwan. USA + UK + Australia members would be 100k users maybe, but of course, most people know English to some extend, it being an international language for 30+ years at least (for big part of XX century French was considered as more used international language btw).
Big part of English being an international language is not only wealth of English-speaking countries, but the consequent technical issue - all automated translation is based on it, since most scientists and engineers write on it (it’s also quite recent thing, 30-40 years)
Do you request cards written in German and Chinese? I say that I like to decipher messages in different languages on my profile, just this year I already got cards in German, Dutch, Polish, Belarussian and Italian 
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You left out Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa off the top of my head, which would add another 16,000 or so. But there’s no point quoting, for comparison, numbers of members from the official site: out of the 801,000 members shown, at least half have been non-active for months and years, some people only sent 1-5 cards and so on. About another third are multiple accounts (trees, dogs, cats, babies). But this is pointless and futile nit-picking. Most people on postcrossing have some English, which was, I think, one part of the main topic?
No I don’t request cards in Chinese or German, why would I? 
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It explains why you don’t get them.
Mostly, if someone has another language in his profile the postcards may also be in that language.
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Actually, I made very generous estimate keeping in mind all these, because USA is 60k users, next are UK with 18k and Australia with 6k users. EDIT: South Africa is Afrikaans, no? I left India, they list English as official
If you look at cards sent, it’s Germany, Russia and then USA with like 15-ish % of all cards sent each.
I think it’s useless to look at any statistics, because if we are defining the criteria to look at, then any of us can find the criteria where one or another country is majority not by numbers but by ‘fairness’
All participants of the topic agreed on English being universal language for postcrossers )))
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