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…
Even within English, a lot of the terms we use are kind of unnatural. I had an American professor once who complained about the use of the term "default" in computing. "Default" is what the bank does when it runs out of money. What does that have to do with me choosing something in the computer? Similarly, a "file" is a bundle of papers, not an individual document. A "program" lists things that will happen in a perfo…
Italian Ruby
121–130 of 178 posts
Re: Italian Ruby
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the dictionary of Repubblica (one of the main Italian Newspapers) authoritative enough? https://dizionari.repubblica.it/Inglese-Italiano/D/default.h... Nowadays it is not used much, but it has been for years in texts related to IT, a reference: http://vietatoridere.blogspot.com/2012/06/default-significat... BTW "per difetto" is also used in legal matters to mean "in mancanza"
No, that dictionary has lost all its authority with this, and no, I would not take texts related to IT as reference: those give the worst examples of bad translations. Take a look at this http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/difetto/ The only use of "per difetto" that existed before a translation of "by default" was ever needed is in the expression "approssimazione per difetto", and the new meaning forcefully attached…
No, as said it is used in legal matters, example:
https://www.brocardi.it/massimario/59534.html
And you go tell this Italian professor:
http://www.diit.unict.it/users/alongheu/linguaggi/aa0910/lez...
The point is that it is actually correct in Italian, if you think about it also in "arrotondamento per difetto" (as opposed to arrotondamento per eccesso")[1] the meaning is that of "arrotondamento per mancanza", i.e. meaning #1 in the Treccani dictionary while it is much more commonly perceived as meaning #2.
[1] respectively "round down" and "round up"
Re: Italian Ruby
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there any attempts to have it both ways? Like, the source code stays in English but my IDE translates keywords to and from my language.
That's exactly how Excel does it. Personally, I don't like it. I prefer English function names. However, the most annoying thing about Excel localisation is that the behaviour of CSV import/export changes depending on the OS locale setting. It doesn't even let you override it. You actually have to change the OS settings to get the English behaviour.
Re: Italian Ruby
#124Also, 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…
Re: Italian Ruby
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Germans are dubbing and they usually speak English quite well. My experience with Italian as well as French don’t like to learn or speak English.
Germany is a bit more complex, because historically speaking, there has been cultural separation. In my experience: - middle aged people speak an ok english - elderly speak a poor or no english - young people speak a very good one Something also worth considering is, as I've previously mentioned, the exposure to international traffic. In big German cities, there are a lot of foreigners; much less in Italy. Finally, i…
Re: Italian Ruby
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe the problem is that translations are wrong, but appear correct if seen by English speaking person through reverse translations, because literal English-Italian translation mapping for said expressions happen to be robust and consistent within itself, despite being inconsistent with actual Italian language in actual real world context.
If the term doesn't exist in Italian and you're translating it for the first time, it can't be wrong (by definition). I had never seen the Greek translation of "by default" in Greek, but now it's just one more computer term.
And you can do even worse: translate "by default" with "in caso di successo" (trans.: "in case of success")
Or also very bad: translate "by default" with "alla scrittura su disco" (trans.: "when writing on disk")
At least the new term must not mean anything else than what it should.
Re: Italian Ruby
#127Only ~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…
Written English is by far the best language among the globally popular ones and the European languages because it's easier to learn due to its small alphabet with no special ligature rules, small frequently used vocabulary, and low number of word variants. Spoken English is not so good due to complex and unintuitive pronunciation, but that's not very relevant nowadays where most media is text (and also, it would be e…
Re: Italian Ruby
#128Also, 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…
> "by default" ... In Italian it is translated (correctly) "per difetto" No way: the correct translation of "by default" is "valore predefinito", anyone who translates it "per difetto" has serious issues with Italian language.
Re: Italian Ruby
#129There's this absolutely mind bending idea that is - every single function should have a unique identifier. Which is to say: def square(x: Int): Int = x * x should get hashed (and if it has dependencies, they should get hashed in there, too), and your programming language should track the unique identity of this function, and keep a list of names separately from the hashes. This totally solves the localization problem…
def following_index(i: Int) = i + 1
def item_count_with_free_gift(n: Int) = i + 1Re: Italian Ruby
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even within English, a lot of the terms we use are kind of unnatural. I had an American professor once who complained about the use of the term "default" in computing. "Default" is what the bank does when it runs out of money. What does that have to do with me choosing something in the computer? Similarly, a "file" is a bundle of papers, not an individual document. A "program" lists things that will happen in a perfo…
Default makes sense to me... according to your own definition. It's the choice when you're out of choices. You fail to fulfill your obligation to specify behavior, so, default behavior.
You can just about support the computer sense by thinking that a default choice is used when a user has failed in their duty to make an explicit choice, etc. But it is a bit of a stretch.
Of course, by now, the computer sense has fed back into broader usage, so it just seems like a perfectly ordinary use of the word.