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Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

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Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#41

Post by xiaoma »

lt wrote: post #30
rbanffy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English could be considered a neutral language, one to fall back when you can't use the right one. That does not forbid nVidia from hiring decent translators. And, BTW, were the software open-source, you could correct the messages for them to make sense..

The point is that some technical terms like anti-aliasing usually make little sense even when translated well.

How so?

Say 消除鋸齒 to computer geeks in Taiwan and they'll understand it without difficulty. Say it to non-computer people, and they won't get it... just as English-speaking non-computer people won't understand "anti-aliasing".

Assuming you're not talking about languages used by aboriginal groups who don't have computers, how could you translate a term "well" and yet come up with something that makes little sense?

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#42

Post by Timothee »

yardie wrote: post #19
halostatue wrote: post #8

This is why my company decided to go with a logging/messaging mechanism that stores messages by ID with parameters. We can get a log file from customers in France who see the error message in French, but we can read their log file in English because it's in a neutral format. This isn't a panacea, as it means that there's a bit more work involved to integrate with tools like Splunk, and we obviously don't log to anyth…

Why would your customers even need to see the log file? For general errors we have a language table that spits out the local copy to the screen. Common errors are translated (~100). Behind the scenes, the logs are in english for internal errors, and the language of the OS for everything else. We rely on .NET so exceptions are tied to the OS. We have some older components that do spit out error codes. (like COMS, erro…

One helpful company could actually publish that language table, so that with a Polish message, you can find out what is the corresponding English message and use Google with that.

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#43

Post by peter_severin »

I use Ubuntu in French and I find the translations to be in a pretty good shape. When I get an error message then I just use the command line to launch the same program in English: LC_ALL=en_US program. Works pretty well.

Recently I switched my parents to a Romanian version of Ubuntu and I was pretty disappointed with the state of translations. Bad wording, inconsistent translations, partial translations etc. But English is not an option for my parents. For now I try to identify translation problems and contribute patches to fix them.

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#44

Post by neonscribe »

eru wrote: post #35
cema wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they do, However, in different contexts. Latin has been the language of (European) science long after it stopped being dominant in other respects. English can turn out to remain dominant in technological fields, specifically software, for a long time, even as other languages may overtake it otherwise.

Yes. German was also very important in science at the end of the 19-th century.

And French was the language of diplomacy from the 17th century until WWII. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#45

Post by lt »

xiaoma wrote: post #41
lt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that some technical terms like anti-aliasing usually make little sense even when translated well.

How so? Say 消除鋸齒 to computer geeks in Taiwan and they'll understand it without difficulty. Say it to non-computer people, and they won't get it... just as English-speaking non-computer people won't understand "anti-aliasing". Assuming you're not talking about languages used by aboriginal groups who don't have computers, how could you translate a term "well" and yet come up with something that makes little sense?

I guess some languages are different than others. Some cultures tend to translate pretty much everything (I noticed that in spanish), others accept foreign neologisms.

In portuguese we tend to use the english words for technical terms and jargon, sometimes slightly corrupted to fit the grammar. Terms like delete, debug and commit are conjugated in as if they were regular portuguese verbs and used frequently even with acceptable translations existing. Delete in particular is quite common even among non-technical people.

For many technical terms, specially newer ones, I can't even think of any acceptable translations without it sounding silly. Most of the time they are left as-is and you need to know the jargon to understand the translation.

I much prefer to read technical documents and books in english.

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#47

Post by rbanffy »

halostatue wrote: post #25
rbanffy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm... Including a button on dialog boxes for googling (or bing'ing) the error in language-neutral form... Nice item for a future GUI wishlist.

I'm not sure that a button for search is the right way to go; it would work, definitely, but at the cost of cluttering your UI. Insertion into copy is probably a better idea, because you may be emailing the error message to a systems administrator instead of searching it.

Perhaps a collapsed details or additional actions pane

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#48

Post by heyitsnick »

barnaby wrote: post #38

I know the blog is to help people learn English, but isn't that antithetical to helping non-English speakers learn how to use computers? Shouldn't we instead be contributing to non-English documentation so that even those who are too poor to learn English, can still learn to use a computer? Ubuntu is doing this beautifully.

Sure, but that wasn't the point of the article. It was saying that people who have had a similar problem will post in tech forums, and they will xquote the error message in whatever language their system is in. English language tech forums will always out-number other european languages, both because of a larger user-base, and because europeans often themselves run english software themselves. However good documentation in foreign speaking languages improves, this won't change. He's recommending to someone who can manage to use English language software to go ahead; it may be uphill to start but it will be worthwhile to do it.

I am English and live in a Spanish speaking country, and recently purchased a new laptop which had vista pre-installed in Spanish. My Spanish is good enough to not have problems using the software, but I know exactly what the article author is talking about, I've had this problem many times. Thankfully because i have a history with using English language windows so I can often guess the exact wording for the English translation; but others would not.

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#49

Post by rbanffy »

lt wrote: post #30
rbanffy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English could be considered a neutral language, one to fall back when you can't use the right one. That does not forbid nVidia from hiring decent translators. And, BTW, were the software open-source, you could correct the messages for them to make sense..

The point is that some technical terms like anti-aliasing usually make little sense even when translated well.

Just don't translate the technical terms unless there is a well accepted translation for it. You can translate the rest.

Re: Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software

#50

Post by shiranaihito »

dazzawazza wrote: post #3

I'd go as far as to say everyone should just move to English for everything, not just Operating Systems.

Silly.

I guess you only know English. Your native language is part of who you are, and how you express yourself.

Other languages are fun because they allow you to express yourself in different ways, and each language has its own neat tricks and entertaining words and phrases. You wouldn't want to force anyone to give that up.

As for computers, I get really annoyed if I have to use a Finnish version of anything, because it just feels wrong and clumsy.

The author has a good point that using an English OS helps you with various things, and learning the language, of course.

But the next logical step would be to tell people to avoid reading most of the Internet, because 95% of all people can't write English even if it's their native language.

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