DDD and Ubiquitous language

A recurring subject on several sessions on the 1st day of Javazone 09 was Domain Driven Design and Ubiquitous Language. I do agree with those believes it is important to establish a language that can be used by domain experts and developers to ensure consistency.

Just before I had to leave I attended the DDD panel discussion where it was discussed whether this language should be used in the code as well. Well that is completely natural for English speaking developers. For developers in countries where English is not a native language, this raises some questions:

• The code can not be maintained by people not familiar with the language the code is written in. This is very relevant in outsourcing.
  
• It will pose problems when companies from different countries merges and must update the code and integrate to reflect the new situation.
• Code that will or can be exposed as open source or in company partnerships will be of less value if it is written in non English

My personal opinion is that Norwegian (my native language) does not look well in code. It feels unnatural.

Is it responsible to write code in a non English language? I think this should be discussed with the stakeholders. On the other hand when there is a language impedance, how do you deal with it? Is it the developers responsibility?

I wanted to ask the panel these questions, but had to leave to catch a bus.

Updated: Corrected Domain Driven Development to Domain Driven design and added useful links.