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Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

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Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#41
post #17

No, it's not a bad idea, and these 4 lines of bash script contain no solid reasoning, argument, or business logic as to why helping the other 80% of the world's population is a very bad idea. Doing internationalization without support libraries is a very bad idea, as this sample code helps illustrate.

It is PowerShell.

Shamelessly off-topic, but every time I see the Verb-Noun paradigm of Powershell I get into a fit of rage. Why, Microsoft, why!?

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#42
post #30

In my language, there isn't No, there is only "YES" and "MAYBE".

Mind pointing out which one? http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/yesnomaybe.htm

Perhaps Japanese. The meaning of "Hai" is more like "true" than "yes".

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#43
post #30

In my language, there isn't No, there is only "YES" and "MAYBE".

Mind pointing out which one? http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/yesnomaybe.htm

Could be Japanese, depending on the situation.

http://www.japanese-language.aiyori.org/article6.html

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#44
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind pointing out which one? http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/yesnomaybe.htm

Could be Japanese, depending on the situation. http://www.japanese-language.aiyori.org/article6.html

The account has a history. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6225716 and other comments from that account are consistent, and suggest a language other than Japanese. And bradbeattie's own link points to a table which shows that languages other than Japanese also have no direct translation for 'yes'.

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#46
post #38

This problem also applies to MediaWiki. They decided to internationalize pretty much everything, too. Not only functions are translated; the functionality of some URL parts also depends on the language - and you'll get a lot of duplicates when more languages are enabled.

Care to expand on that? The API is not i18ned (apart from the content, obviously), the only thing vaguely similar to what you wrote which I can see are the names of the special pages. But even though they are translated into the wiki content language, on input, every wiki accepts the English version as well. Also, the canonical identifier is present in the page for scripts to use. Or, what problems do you have?

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a terrible idea unless you can force the command to accept arguments in a specific language. Do you expect someone to iterate all the possible variants of "yes"?

With the proper support libraries, Da/Yes/Ha/Ja/etc/etc/etc it's trivial.

Just wow. No. This couldn't be more wrong if you tried.

There is literally no way to know what languages are supported, this is impossible to enumerate, and what might pass for correct at one time might be adjusted later to better reflect conversational usage.

It's like insisting you could possibly know all the honorifics a personal name might have. If you think you can you're deluding yourself.

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind pointing out which one? http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/yesnomaybe.htm

Perhaps Japanese. The meaning of "Hai" is more like "true" than "yes".

Hai means neither true, yes, or no. It only means "I have heard you". This trips up many westerners.

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#49
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In PowerShell you do the following: New-PSSessionOption -Culture=de-DE Might be worthwhile looking up the PowerShell reference before making comments like that...

Sure, but how long is this solution available and in how many years do you think it will be deprecated? Getting a bit offtopic though.

I'm afraid I was very much on point.

Re: Why internationalization of commands is a very bad idea

#50
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-naive version sets the PowerShell culture/Bash locale before it runs anything.

That works, but it also means that non-English speakers have to learn everything twice.

Not sure I see the point you are attempting to make.
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