Swede as well and practically my whole career have been abroad. Some year ago I was interviewed by another Swede and we opted to do it In English.
I’d probably be able to, but I’d have to fall back on English at points.
Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
121–130 of 174 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#122India;
CS or mostly any other higher education is English.
It is really hard to translate things into many languages we have here (Especially South India). If done, they will be mostly Sanskrit terms that are still quite harder to understand.
I think everything being in English is a virtue because of seemless interop with the Internet (which is mostly English).
Even when technical topics are conversed in native languages, the terms are mostly English.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#123Coming from Latin America I would have never imagined before this thread that so many large countries would not teach CS in their own languages, and would have to speak in English amongst themselves! It's fascinating, over here we incorporate thousands of English words into the Spanish IT lingo, but while they can could roughly communicate in English, most people I know wouldn't be able to have a discussion entirely…
I’m (half) Italian and (as you might expect) we do much the same when we import terms from English: commit becomes commitare, debug becomes debugare, and so forth. There’s only three suffixes (‘cogniugazioni’) of verbs in Italian (-are, -ere, and -ire) but the relative frequency decreases right-to-left across that list and indeed most verbs ‘imported’ from English fall into the first category.
It’s particularly when we ‘re-import’ something that English actually imported from Latin or Latinate languages. For example, import itself: we have importare in Italian which actually means “to care about”. But of course we re-import it as meaning “to bring in” (either in economics, or in the Python sense), so it acquires a meaning that it doesn’t actually have in Italian, and we pronounce it differently by moving the stress from early in the word for our native meaning to late in the word (on the -are) for the ‘foreign’ meaning.
Esportare means “to export”. But of course we bring in “exportare” from English, which is a corruption of our “esportare”.
Since I’m half English too, out of courtesy I make a point of using the most Italian words possible, because slinging around English terms is snooty and a sign that one is showing off, and of course as a native English speaker I could do it better than most. So for most people it’s a computer, which gets pronounced something like com-pù-tèr”, whereas I make it a point of referring to it as a calcolatore (a “male calculator”, which is the native term for an arithmetic machine that can execute arbitrary streams of commands, whereas a calcolatrice is a “female calculator” that cannot be programmed, i.e. a calculator in English).
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
While "branch" is loaned in Korea, "implementation" is never loaned, the translation 구현 completely satisfied that demand. In my experience, there are better and worse translations of terms, and adoption mostly depends on quality of translation. Edit: Additional explanation. 구현 roughly means "realization", which I think is a better term than even "implementation" itself. Word "implementation" in non-programming contex…
It's old-fashioned, but branch does have a Korean equivalent: 분기 (literally "branching", or a single branch separating into multiple branches). E.g., 무조건 분기 (unconditional branch), 조건 분기 (conditional branch), 분기문 (branch statement). (I suspect it was imported from Japanese 分岐.)
Is that branch as in CPU instructions? We(edit: in Japanese) refer to the Git feature as ブランチ(buranchi) and CPU instructions as 分岐命令(bunki meirei). Old CS folks calls computers as 計算機 but normally it’s コンピュータ.
Sounds like whether a word is loaned or created/translated varies?
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sure, but there's quite a few keywords in English. And then there are so many APIs and so much source code with symbols that consist of English words.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's old-fashioned, but branch does have a Korean equivalent: 분기 (literally "branching", or a single branch separating into multiple branches). E.g., 무조건 분기 (unconditional branch), 조건 분기 (conditional branch), 분기문 (branch statement). (I suspect it was imported from Japanese 分岐.)
Is that branch as in CPU instructions? We(edit: in Japanese) refer to the Git feature as ブランチ(buranchi) and CPU instructions as 分岐命令(bunki meirei). Old CS folks calls computers as 計算機 but normally it’s コンピュータ. Sounds like whether a word is loaned or created/translated varies?
Ah yes it's CPU instruction. I'm not sure if a git branch is ever called 분기 - I guess most people use the English "branch" for it.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#127Coming from Latin America I would have never imagined before this thread that so many large countries would not teach CS in their own languages, and would have to speak in English amongst themselves! It's fascinating, over here we incorporate thousands of English words into the Spanish IT lingo, but while they can could roughly communicate in English, most people I know wouldn't be able to have a discussion entirely…
Dude, verbs in spanish must end in -ar -er -IR... -or???? It isn't spanish...
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#128It's a big problem in the three nationalist east Asian countries, Japan, Korea and now less so China. As well as Germany. They still insist to invent their own terms and stick to it. It's sometimes very hard to find out what they really mean, esp. if they refuse to tell you the common English term.
China got much better recently, you see a big difference to Korea and Japan. Koreans and Germans at least speak a lot of english, but in Japan it's extremely hard if they would not use so many imported terms. Which helps. Germans even refuse that and come up with their own silly superlong monster words for simple terms.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#129Yes, and I think English native speakers have more trouble discussing CS because they have to share the common and CS lexicon in the same language.
We can simply take what we want from English and incorporate it to our languages as specialized terms just as they do with Latin and Greek. I see this as a privilege.
Re: Ask HN: Can you discuss CS in your native language?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you shocked? In fact I am shocked you are shocked.
Because most of the CS/CEng content is in English, not knowing english is a huge disadvantage. Now I am shocked that you are shocked that s/he is shocked.
Knowing English definitely is an advantage, but how big?
If you’re not interested in an international careeer (many people aren’t), you have quality education available in your local language, and there’s a thriving local tech scene I don’t see why it has to be that much of a disadvantage.
There are many other languages that are big and used by tens of millions of people. In most of those languages you can find all the books, courses, and conversations you need to take up computering.