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Italian Ruby

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Re: Italian Ruby

#21

Post by purple-again »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #12
cptwunderlich wrote: post #4

There have been some attempts for localized programming languages. In fact, e.g., MS Excel Macros are localized (e.g., "SUMME()" in german instead of "SUM()"). There is even a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_... I'm a bit conflicted. On the one hand, I am all for language diversity and empowering local languages. It may also help novices and very young learners. On the othe…

There aren’t that many keywords so just learn them. Plus many words don’t make sense eg Promise doesn’t tell you what it is, they could be called promessa and we’d get used to it.

What does that mean? Promise is an excellent one word description of the underlying phenomenon. Your language promises that the code will finish executing before the code you place in your then/error blocks allowing you to safely write some asynchronous logic in a synchronous world.

Re: Italian Ruby

#23

Post by jaclaz »

Also, sometimes, translations have a different (perceived) meaning.

A pet peeve of mine is "by default".

In Italian it is translated (correctly) "per difetto", and it is "fine" when other people already know the term, but otherways "difetto" is also the translation of "defect", and you will have a tough time explaining to a layman that it is not a "defect" in that other sense.

Another "queer" word (I found it in the Italian version of some database tools) is "ometti" (which is the correct translation of "omit") but that actually I normally read as "little men".

In Excel there is "MODE" (statistical function) that is translated into "MODA" which I read as "fashion" and "MOD" (modulo operation) which is translated into "RESTO" (which has a more common meaning of "change" in the sense of what a cashier gives you back when you pay besides that of "remainder").

Re: Italian Ruby

#24

Post by szemet »

Gravityloss wrote: post #2

This could work very well when teaching programming.

I actually liked the mixed language approach (keywords/library functions in english, my stuff localized) when I've learned programming (and did not speak english well):

Even then, you can learn the keywords and standard library function names easily - but to name things, that needs a different level of language knowledge.

So teaching in mixed languages is a good compromise. And it is also very helpful to immediately distinguish between things that were already there, and things have been defined in the actual program. I remember this being a helpful feature to learn language/stdlib by simply reading others code.

The more I think of it: it would be good to get back this kind of easy differentiation (maybe with IDE extension?) now...

On the other hand Scratch have localization support, and lack of syntax errors - maybe the two largest blockers for smaller children...

Re: Italian Ruby

#25

Post by eecc »

Kreotiko wrote: post #14

No intention to be rude but the Readme page doesn’t seem written by somebody native. I understand that English is basically the only language for technical writing but writing that bad in Italian defies the purpose of this Gem altogether.

Indeed, the lack of proper subjunctive forms in combination with subordinate clauses isn’t something you’d expect when claiming to protect proper use of the Italian language

Re: Italian Ruby

#26

Post by t0astbread »

purple-again wrote: post #21
quickthrower2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren’t that many keywords so just learn them. Plus many words don’t make sense eg Promise doesn’t tell you what it is, they could be called promessa and we’d get used to it.

What does that mean? Promise is an excellent one word description of the underlying phenomenon. Your language promises that the code will finish executing before the code you place in your then/error blocks allowing you to safely write some asynchronous logic in a synchronous world.

Really? I always understood it as "we promise you this thing but all we can give you now is the promise".

Re: Italian Ruby

#27

Post by EdiX »

browsergap wrote: post #16

Only ~5% of Earth speaks English natively. Another 15% speak it as an nth language. I think English based programming is an anomaly that came out of the post-WWII US/UK cultural world order, and from that sustained economic boom came modern computers, languages and the internet to a mass market. 20% of the world speaks Mandarin Chinese (not all as a first language tho). And, about the same % as speak English natively…

> 20% of the world speaks Mandarin Chinese (not all as a first language tho). And, about the same % as speak English natively, speak Hindi (+ dialects) natively, and again about the same amount speak Arabic, and again about the same amount (all above 300 million) speak French, tho a greater % of those have le français as an nth language.

What are your sources for this because cross checking with wikipedia, which uses Ethnologue as a source, I find several discrepancies. For example the number of people who speak french isn't "the same amount" as native english speakers, it's 53% and that's if you include 2nd language speakers. You make it sound like Hindi and English are comparable but Hindi has very few 2nd language speakers.

In fact looking at [1] the choice of english looks a lot more logical than I would have thought.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...

Re: Italian Ruby

#29

Post by billars »

Kreotiko wrote: post #14

No intention to be rude but the Readme page doesn’t seem written by somebody native. I understand that English is basically the only language for technical writing but writing that bad in Italian defies the purpose of this Gem altogether.

I think you are wrong, see the author, maybe it is not the best italian but nobody is perfect.

Re: Italian Ruby

#30

Post by TulliusCicero »

viraptor wrote: post #20
makach wrote: post #7

ah, this reminds me of how much JOY I am having using my localized Microsoft Excel. All formulas have been translated to my native language and it's just BLISS to work with. This makes it MUCH easier to search the interweb for my specific formula question. We obviously need much more localization. Particularily in error messages.

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. I can think of ways going for specific formula could be both better and worse. The localised error messages are also a double edged sword - if you can solve your own problem based on the message, they're better, but if you need to Google it your chances of finding a solution go down due to fewer hits.

They're definitely being sarcastic.
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