Quite the contrary ! The inversion, in English as in all germanic languages is far more elegant in this case !
Actually, "it may be that he will never be famous" sounds cumbersome. You should avoid "that" at all times, whenever possible.
You're not a native English speaker, are you ?

Words cannot express the extent to which you are wrong.

or so you say. Are you a teacher of English language ?

we'll disagree on this forever, Mr English academician, I suppose. I think I can survive the disagreement, though...

We can disagree on it for ever, but if no agreement is reached after two weeks then a English speaking moderator will have to decide which version is correct and edit the sentence if necessary. It may interest you to know that there is only one moderator at present who is a native speaker of English.

And I bet he is no other than you, right ?
So according to you, native means expert, huh ?

"Perhaps he'll never be famous."

Yes, I am acting as blay_paul's reinforcement.

I would also comment and say that in my opinion, "native" = "God" when it comes to this project. Which is more than just "expert"... Much, much more...

Maybe we should wait for CK...

(I'm not a native speaker, but according to what I know, inversion would be appropriate if you put 'never' in the beginning: Perhaps never will he be famous.)

"Perhaps never will he be famous." would be at the 'Yoda' level. Odd sounding, but not glaringly wrong.

The basic problem with "will he be" is that it is the order used in questions.

He will be there.
Will he be there?

So using "will he be" in a statement sounds really wrong.

Inversion would be appropriate with "never" if the "perhaps" wasn't there.

"Never will he be famous." (poetic, but acceptable)

But not with "perhaps", because it adds an element of doubt (whereas with "never" it is more of an emphatic declaration). You have to choose one or the other.

As a French speaker, it doesn't sound that strange to hear "Perhaps will he never...", but this is quite certainly because it is word for word transposition of the French sentence "Peut-être ne sera-t-il jamais..."

More objectively, searching "Perhaps will he never" on Google.com returns only one result (this sentence).
"Perhaps will I never" => 2 results
"Perhaps will you never" => No results found for "Perhaps will I never".
"Perhaps will we never" => 1 result
"Perhaps will they never" => No results found for "Perhaps will they never".

On the other hand...
"Perhaps I will never" => 396,000 results
"Perhaps you will never" => 2,650,000 results
"Perhaps he will never" => 2,190,000 results
"Perhaps we will never" => 3,300,000 results
"Perhaps they will never" => 2,770,000 results

I think we can objectively say that the inversion makes the sentence wrong.

So @sacredceltic, it would be appreciated that you change your sentence as Paul suggested. Otherwise, we will have to tag this with "wrong" or something.

Google rules ?
Do you know that MOST people cannot write many words properly and that it results in the web being OVERWHELMED with spelling mistakes, which in turn are taken for granted ?
According to this rule, similarly to the way bad currency ALWAYS ends up replacing good ones (if you know about economy), wrong spelling and turns of phrases will always end up replacing right ones. Internet, as finance, is the reign of mediocrity!
Of course this would not prove me right in this case, but the method you employ to evidence it is plain wrong.
The inversion is not only possible in French (which is irrelevant as French is a Romance language) but also in other germanic languages such as German and Dutch.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea."

But of course, few people write as Samuel Taylor Coleridge used to...

Just to be clear, I don't see any point in rejecting a particular form of a sentence just because it's barely used. So if you want to keep this, it's fine. One can understand its meaning, and that's the most important.

In the absolute, I don't believe there's anything such as a "right" way or a "wrong" way to say/write something. Languages evolve, they will always evolve, and maybe in one hundred years, English speakers will rather say "Perhaps will he never" instead of "Perhaps he will never".

The correctness or wrongness of a phrase is always relative to who you're talking to, and when you're talking, the order in which you place words in your sentences will generate a different feeling for the person who is listening to you. So the question we need to answer here is: how would the majority of native English speakers feel when they hear "Perhaps will he never become famous"? Does it sound poetic, or does it just sound plain weird?

You can of course try to ask all the English speakers in the world, but I think Google can bring an answer here. I won't disagree that there is a lot of mediocre content on the internet, but thankfully there are also many people who are educated and who can write elegantly. And the thing is that out of the 2 million times "Perhaps he will never" was used, not a single person ever wanted to use "Perhaps will he never" instead.

If it was zero versus a hundred, then it would have not been possible to tell. But here it's zero versus 2 million. So it's fair to conclude that "Perhaps will he never" is a strange formulation. If it wasn't strange for people to speak in such a way, then they would use it more.

I'm going to tag this sentence "unnatural" and we'll leave it like that.

On an unrelated matter, sacredceltic, you seriously need to stop trolling so much. This is my first warning.

"trolling"?

Can you pinpoint instances where I trolled ?!?
Since I have started contributing here, I have already corrected several dozens mistakes ? Is that trolling ?!?

Your contributions are welcome, well, this sentence not so much but in general they are. Your attitude, however, is at best overly confrontational. Tatoeba relies on everybody's contributions and your contributions do not give you free reign to make this a less pleasant place for others to come.

In other words, this is Trang's sand-box and if you want to be here you have to play nicely with the other kids.

what do you mean by my "attitude is at best confrontational" ?
I come here to contribute to your project, and no sooner do I forget a dot or a capitalisation that you pound me within the minute !! I feel like I'm being spied on and harassed and it is unacceptable for an open project like this, to which I genuinely wanted to contribute !
I made suggestions to change this and you call it confrontational ? Everything that goes against your views must be, ain't it ?
I will leave your little group of amateurs full of themselves in your thousands of linguistic mistakes!

So long !

(Sound of crickets chirping)

Shall I remind you the debate on this very sentence was started by no other than YOU when I DULY corrected an INCORRECT French translation "Peut-être il ne sera jamais célèbre".
No sooner had I done, that you jumped at my throat like the pitbull that you are !

(So much for the crickets...)

This is an open project and everybody can see everybody else's contributions. Every sentence added or corrected is shown on the front page. And just about every sentence seen on the front page that doesn't have a capital letter of full stop will be noticed. It's nothing personal, and everybody has mistakes pointed out.

To be blunt, it's obvious that you have some trouble with social interaction. I'm not saying that to be nasty, I have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome myself and have my own share of problems in that area. I strongly suggest that you don't make any final decisions but take a break for a few days and try to relax. Maybe cut back on the Internet for a while. Remember that not everything is about you and try not to jump on everything that catches your attention.

There's no reason you can't make your participation in online communities a more enjoyable one for everybody including yourself.

Not everything is about me ?!? But you are the one intervening in EMERGENCY within a minute each time I forget a DOT !!! I never spoke to you in the first place, Mr pitbull ! You have been commenting my EVERY sentence since I logged here !!
You just behave like this is your personal property and that I am going to damage it ! What is this for an open project ???

As for me, the experience with this "personal sand-box" is over ! I thought it would be more serious and open.
I corrected dozens of mistakes, you don't have to thank me.

this is an open source projet

the data can all be downloaded here http://tatoeba.org/fre/download...mple_sentences
the whole source code is here
http://subversion.assembla.com/svn/tatoeba2/
if you think you can't bear blay paul, our imperialist flag system, you have the right to start over a new project, what we call in open source world a "fork", and this way you will have the possibility to make it the way you want

for the moment there is not only you, but a lot of people making a community, and it's not by writing sentences full of ?!? that people will appreciate your work, nor change their mind.

Hmmm. I have come late to this one, but as a native speaker of English, I must comment that "Perhaps will he never be famous" is quite unnatural English. A sentence which means the same as the Japanese and French could be: "Perhaps he will never be famous". The "will he" in the current version is the problem. It partially setting up a question, but you can't preface a question with "perhaps".