I think foreign language sub-forums can work and can be a positive thing for the maemo community. I've seen successful sites with non-english forums, as well as sub-forums specific to organizations.

The important thing here is:

• moderator(s) - who will uphold order to the forum (nothing vulgar, illegal, racial, religious, etc), without abusing their authority
• topic repetition/redirection - if a certain topic has been discussed before, members should redirect the discussion to specific english threads
• language barrier - if a member cannot express him/herself easily in english, then this is where the sub-forum shines. If members are comfortable posting in english, try to post on the main forums, and use language specific-forum to only help those who have a hard time with english.

Some things to consider:

• maybe a localized maemo organization/group can run these sub-forums. They can later on vote who moderates the sub-forum in the future.
• maybe other localized commercial sites using the 'maemo' trademark can be encouraged to not create their own forum and instead use the new language specific sub-forum here at Talk, as well as display the feed of the sub-forum on their sites (I can create a special feed script for this).
• with localized sub-forums, it becomes easier for members to get to know each other. This can maybe lead to occasional local Maemo meet-ups, etc. This can be a great tool for Nokia to target specific groups/locations later on.