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

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite examples are inlining -> inlinear and debugging -> debuguear They are very difficult to translate.

The alleged difficulty lies only in the mind. To inline is to include (incluir) or insert (insertar), in a fashion that's compatible with the compiler optimization concept. Debug, depurar. Both have been in use in Spanish since at least the 80s.

We use "incluir" for something like #include .

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

From my personal experience, best example is "You see an exception/error, search google, click the first stackoverflow link". You can of course find the answer in your native language also, but it will be less likely it exists, it will be harder to find, and less "peer-reviewed".

Then you learn that .net throws localized exceptions, word by word machine translated.

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

#163
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a (non-native) Mandarin Chinese speaker, and I'm essentially unable to have the most basic conversation about programming. No terms that I'm aware of are phonetic transfers (Chinese does that occasionally, but not often), they're all new terms, and I can't formulate a single sentence without having to look everything up. It's like having to relearn the language -- very frustrating! (Not saying they should be doi…

In terms of general science and technology I find the Mandarin names more illuminating. English technical vocabulary tends toward coinages from Latin and Greek roots that obscures their intuitive meaning to high schoolers. e.g. the word "commutative property" in Mandarin is a plain-language "exchange rule", with no appeal to classical vocabulary.

To be fair, most of those "obscure" coinages in English were not so obscure when they were coined. Until rather recently, members of "academic society" were expected to know some degree of Latin and Greek.

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

#164
My mother tongue is Malagasy, the official language of Madagascar alongside French.

Discussing CS or any other scientific matters in that language at least in my opinion is theoretically possible as there is a book on the Java programming language written in Malagasy. I have made some attempts myself trying to explain Python on the Malagasy Wikibooks [1] and on the Malagasy Wikipedia as well [2].

So yes, formally it _is_ possible. There is quite an extensive vocabulary pertaining to mathematics [3] as well, most of which having been crafted in the 70s and 80s as part of a nationwide effort to use Malagasy academically. The beauty of it is that they consist of native words as well as "malagasized" words.

In practice, sadly, it never happens. All university courses are taught in French, if not in English for the most advanced ones. And no company that I've heard of use Malagasy as a formal working language :(

[1] https://mg.wikibooks.org/wiki/Python

[2] https://mg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solosaina

[3] http://kajy.blogspot.com/2011/04/ireo-voambolana-matematika-...

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

#166

Swede here. Never felt hindered by Swedish but with very few exceptions domain-specific terms will be English words (resulting in beautiful Swenglish/svengelska). “Najs refactor, men kan du rebasa dina commits innan vi mergar till masterbranchen?” (Written documentation, commit messages etc will always be in English though) I saw your post on the same topic on Kodapor and I think it’s just a matter of you having had…

English is not that foreign though, it is also Germanic.

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

#167
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why would it feel awkward/academic to use translated versions for I'm guessing common words in spanish such as pull?

That one perception may be just cultural or regional. It may be just cool to be lazy, and emit an air of condescendence if one uses one's native language consistently. Pullear, deployar are ridiculous and lazy. For instance, deploy has its roots in the military term: to place and equip troops in a battlefield. The Spanish words desplegar (v.) and despliegue (n.) have existed for ages with identical meaning, and in co…

Hmm, I may be misreading your comments in this thread but it sounds like you're not okay with languages simply... evolving?

You are aware that importing words is a thing, right? Even if equivalent words already exist. It's perfectly normal and even healthy for a language to do so.

To me, pullear and deployar are just a lot more clear and there's no ambiguity. "Desplegar" would not be very meaningful to me in the context of my work.

It's all about clarity in my mind and condescension really has nothing to do with it.

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

#168

For my PhD thesis, I was required to write an abstract in my native language, German, and had a pretty hard time of it. On the other hand, I've experimented a bit with high school level CS teaching, and found that with sufficient preparation, it's fairly doable. I suspect that when we struggle to express a concept in our native language, we may have somewhat deceived ourselves in how clearly we expressed the concept…

I suspect what you're saying could definitely be a phenomenon. However, in this case, I think it's just a matter of domain and context.

I speak both English and Spanish natively, however, I'm more comfortable in English when talking about e.g. technology and music. On the other hand, I'm more comfortable in Spanish when talking about math, feelings, etc.

As you can probably already tell, it's not like math and feelings are very related. It's just that I've probably been more exposed to those things in Spanish than in English. Same goes for technology and music topics, I've just been exposed to them in English a lot more than in Spanish.

Btw, I also had to write a dissertation in Spanish and I, too, had trouble with it, hah.

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

#169
post #123
post #84

Coming 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 particul…

I never realized that but we have exactly the same thing in French : three categories on verbs, the most regular and sensible is the first one and this is where all the imported words fall into: débugger, rebooter,...

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

#170
I have no trouble discussing it concepts in Swedish. As long as you accept some creative translations you can find perfectly fine Swedish words. And if you can't, just invent new ones. I.e "Reverted the last change set because of strange exceptions." -> "Återställde senaste ändringen pga konstiga undantag." "Please rebase the branch to the master branch before sending a pull request." -> "Se till så att spåret utgår från huvudspåret innan du begär spårhämtning." Not a literal translation but it doesn't have to be.
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