Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 174 posts

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#71

Post by sk0g »

Barrin92 wrote: post #69

I'm German. theoretical CS and maths terms are no problem because they all have a German equivalent. More programming related lingo is more difficult because it's so heavily dominated by the anglosphere that I (and a lot of people I know) just adopt the english phrases. Like git vocabulary or language related stuff.

I had another question, somewhat unrelated - how do you do naming if you're programming? In German you can just build a long word without spaces in between, so do you still do camel/snake casing to split them up?

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#72

Post by matz1 »

cryptonector wrote: post #44
resouer wrote: post #12

This question actually shocked me. At least as East Asian ppl who speak Chinese, Korean or Japanese etc, it's way easier for us to discuss CS (or anything else) in native languages. I think this difficulty only exists in certain western languages.

How do you deal with programming languages' being so based on English?

I do not see programming language as English. Sure it may use alphabet and borrow some english word but to me it still hardly english.

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#73

Post by abiogenesis »

kamyarg wrote: post #38

I think I can only echo most of the comments here that of course there are translations of "branch" "implementation" etc., but the norm is to adapt the English one to the language in my experience. Good example is Turkish, there have been a lot of effort into deriving enough words to be able to converse in full Turkish about the CS topics or even Scientific topics, but it was not able to "satisfy the demand". As an e…

That article is a bit inconsistent. If "ber" is the root word for "compute", then "computing" should be translated as "berleme", not "berimleme" (similar to "hesap -> hesaplama" vs "calculate -> calculation").

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#74

Post by anw »

resouer wrote: post #12

This question actually shocked me. At least as East Asian ppl who speak Chinese, Korean or Japanese etc, it's way easier for us to discuss CS (or anything else) in native languages. I think this difficulty only exists in certain western languages.

I think it is hard to categorize Chinese (I imagine you're speaking about Mandarin?), Korean, and Japanese all together for a general statement.

I have read some Japanese programming books. For programming, and IT in general, Japanese borrows heavily from English vocabulary for novel terms, along with using a lot of abbreviations which also come from English.

So you will see sentences such as: "hoverイベント 要素にマウスが乗った時、外れた時に指定した処理を行う" which uses literal "hover" with borrowed イベント(ibento:event) and borrowed マウス (mausu:mouse) all within one short sentence. You will very often find sentences made up mostly of borrowed words when describing a new term and its context.

Korean also borrows a lot of terms from English, but I feel I run into it to a lesser degree than Japanese.

For example: "여담으로 외국 오라클 홈페이지에 들어가면 Java SE 11버전까지 나와있지만 8버전을 사용하는 이유는 버전이 높을수록 새로운 기능들을 제공하지만 안정성이나 버그 등의 문제가 있기 때문에 8버전을 사용하였습니다", where you see borrowed words "오라클 홈페이지" (orakeul hompeiji:Oracle Homepage), "버전" (beojeon:Version), "버그" (beogeu:Bug) along with literal English "Java SE 11". So it also has a lot of borrowed words, but they're more spread out through the actual sentences.

I do not know either traditional or simplified Chinese well enough to comment on that. But from talking with the native speakers I know or work with, it seems like Mandarin does not directly borrow as much English as Korean or Japanese.

Between the 3 you mentioned, I feel Japanese would probably have the hardest time trying to describe CS in its native language without using borrowed words, because a lot of words are no longer thought of as "borrowed" since they're so frequently used. I can not think of any good words to use as replacements that would not sound archaic or forced.

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#75

Post by viklove »

rglullis wrote: post #55
wenc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the number of questions on those sites: Pt: 140,876 Ru: 322,061 Es: 122,603 Jp: 22,743 Stackoverflow.com (EN): 19,580,539

Does it matter? If I spoke no English, I'd rather have 1% of the equivalent English content in Portuguese than 0%. And having the site such as pt.SO is at least a sign that there is a significant number of people that prefer non-English to keep the discussion. Also, there is a good amount of people that can read something from English SO, but would never contribute. Having a language-specific site is a chance for the…

Seems like you'd just be better off learning English so your ability to find help online isn't hamstrung.

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#76

Post by rnotaro »

mxz3000 wrote: post #3

I guess the main issue is that languages outside of English generally don't have equivalent words for all of CS terms. I always have trouble explaining what I do (software engineering) in French without resorting to using English words, just because most words don't exist in French, or they don't mean exactly what you mean. This reminds me that I can't stand people coding in languages other than English. Variable nam…

Are you from France ?

In Canada (Québec) we are often using French words while discussing CS. I've noticed that French immigrants are also using a lot of English words even in random day-to-day words.

We called it "L'anglais de France" (France's English) [1]

[1] https://lactualite.com/culture/langlais-de-france/

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#77

Post by soonnow »

sk0g wrote: post #71
Barrin92 wrote: post #69

I'm German. theoretical CS and maths terms are no problem because they all have a German equivalent. More programming related lingo is more difficult because it's so heavily dominated by the anglosphere that I (and a lot of people I know) just adopt the english phrases. Like git vocabulary or language related stuff.

I had another question, somewhat unrelated - how do you do naming if you're programming? In German you can just build a long word without spaces in between, so do you still do camel/snake casing to split them up?

At some point in the past, a few programming languages would try to be localized. I faintly remember Visual Basic using German names for the functions? Also I think SAP/ABAP was German at first. So when you write WENN X>LAENGE(Y) DANN you'd be using German variables, because it fits the programming language. Today I would expect all variables be english and comments be German at best. If I'd see code with German variables I'd just assume it was a beginner.

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#78

Post by soonnow »

dillonmckay wrote: post #70
Barrin92 wrote: post #69

I'm German. theoretical CS and maths terms are no problem because they all have a German equivalent. More programming related lingo is more difficult because it's so heavily dominated by the anglosphere that I (and a lot of people I know) just adopt the english phrases. Like git vocabulary or language related stuff.

What about naming variables, classes, files, etc.?

please see my comment above. All English today unles you are a Beginner.

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#79

Post by soonnow »

zwieback wrote: post #56
kamyarg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nein, Committe niemals in den Master."* Nice to see I can even practice German in HN. * Needless to say, excuse my (possibly) horrible German.

Committe lieber in den Ast (I'm sure nobody use that for branch, right?)

They don't... Sorry

Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?

#80

Post by Barrin92 »

sk0g wrote: post #71
Barrin92 wrote: post #69

I'm German. theoretical CS and maths terms are no problem because they all have a German equivalent. More programming related lingo is more difficult because it's so heavily dominated by the anglosphere that I (and a lot of people I know) just adopt the english phrases. Like git vocabulary or language related stuff.

I had another question, somewhat unrelated - how do you do naming if you're programming? In German you can just build a long word without spaces in between, so do you still do camel/snake casing to split them up?

I've actually worked at more foreign firms than German one's so I may not be the ideal person to answer but when I worked on code that uses German naming people would usually use cases or underscores/hyphens like they do in English. It's just not very readable to use longer German compound words.

That said I think German names are relatively rare outside of old code. Most people just adopt straight up English terms.

Post reply on HN