This is an issue in most languages where software is only loosely localised; in Japanese Windows, for example, a network is transliterated as a “nettowa-ku”. This seems trivial at first but a great deal of the inherent useability of computers for native English speakers derives from the fact that even if the concept is new, the terminology that we use to refer to it gives a hint as to its function; the learning curve becomes a lot more steep when one also has to acquire a whole new set of concept-specific loanwords to refer to the new processes and concepts.
Imagine if, for instance, rather than “connecting to a network” we “did setsuzoku”; I would think that the rate of computer literacy in the west would be far lower, as the jargon involved was basically impenetrable to the vast majority of people.
The only problem with the approach in the article is that if you fully localise the software, but the os remains mostly English-based, the concepts don’t carry across and the burden on new learners is effectively doubled. It’s a neat concept though, and one which I wish had been more prevalent in the early years of computing.
One of the recently invented word for the needs of new technology in my language (Slovenian) was “zgoščenka” for “compact disc”. It’d roughly translates back as “something that is very dense”. Though except in very formal literature just saying “CD” seems to be what has caught on in everyday use (because with the addition of DVDs and Blurays you’d be completely lost as to what you’re referring to)
Another word that’s listed in school books as being recently invented for similar reasons is “plastenka” for “plastic bottle”. The issue here that the word for bottle “steklenica” implies that it’s a made from glass “steklo” so you can’t say “plastic glass bottle”. “Flaša” could mean any kind of bottle/flask so you could add an adjective but its rather informal.
The only other interesting computer related translation I can think of now are “pomnilnik” for “memory” (“pomniti” is the verb “to remember”, so it’s basically “something that remembers”, you could also say “spomin” but that can also mean your brain’s memory). Then for “cache” we have “predpomnilnik” (“before-memory”) and for “buffer” we have “medpomnilnik” (“between-memory”). Though we don’t have any decent word for “buffering” as a verb and people typically just say “loading” instead.
I always found it rather amusing to look at code commented in languages other than English. Also, the unavoidable issues when the compiler dies just because it runs into a special unicode character.
Just as an architectural thing, ‘localization’ in software tends to encourage some fairly crude and brutal translation practices:
As much as possible, you try to rip all the strings out of the ‘default’ (usually English) version, and then iterate through the strings, translating each one into the target language. This has some major advantages, in that it makes the localization a simple, modular, transform file that can be applied to the program without major surgery; and it makes it easy to track progress, divide work, etc. (Look at any of the localizations here to see the Mozilla ones, complete with nice little percentages for strings localized, strings still needing localization, possibly incorrect strings).
On the minus side, that technique is practically perfect for stripping the context and nuance out of the string to be translated. With enough iterations, it’ll work out(since people can file bug reports against translations that seem odd in the context of the program); but it doesn’t lend itself to a holistic or context-sensitive approach.
Ah well. At least unicode is more likely to work than it used to, so freaky overloading of ASCII isn’t needed.
Because jargon like “mouse,” “cursor,” “404 error,” “ethernet,” “Bluetooth,” “USB,” “scroll,” “file,” etc., etc. are easily understood metaphors or terminology? Or because the default icons for saving and opening files, for example, make any sense to anyone under 30? Almost all metaphors are obsolete and have long ceased to convey their original metaphorical meaning, while a significant amount of the remaining jargon is in the form of brands and acronyms.
I’m not sure that trying to shoehorn modern technical terms into little-used languages is the best approach, especially when those languages are not the primary or sole language of most speakers. If everyone in Mali adopted French terminology for technical use (which I suspect is what already happens) we could at least have a single set of standardized terms instead of dozens of different and mutually-unintelligible terms using different metaphors in each language (I would be interested in seeing the different metaphors used to describe “crash,” for example… and don’t they already have words to describe car crashes in their respective languages).
Well, there are ‘underlying issues’, like being a small little dot in a sea of English. And as with a heart patient that has underlying issues, that doesn’t mean you discontinue the treatment.
The Office has usually done a very good job finding words and phrases to replace English terminology - better than France has, IMHO. In fact, their on-line dictionary is THE BEST. It’s helped me find the exact word or phrase I was looking for many times.
Case in point: how would you translate ‘hang-glider’ into French? Transliterating the two words into French is just useless. The word is ‘deltaplane’ - (triangle-shape + soar). From what I’ve seen many other countries have adapted/adopted this Canadian-French (no,not Québecois) word rather than the English phrase. The word was invented by a Montreal translator, who needed a good replacement in an advertising brochure. It took her a few days to come up with the word.
Right you are. My mistake. I just took it that, since you were responding specifically to User100:
who seemed to me to have opened up the topic somewhat (which is I suppose - now you’ve mentioned it - equally open to doubt), that your remark was intended to be as general as I took it that one was.
Yeah, it’s a shame really. I thought that could have been an interesting discussion.
When Desktop GUIs were first translated to German, different companies didn’t manage to agree.
The “File” menu on a Windows PC was called “Datei”, which is the generally accepted word for a computer file. It was actually a made-up word consisting of Daten (data) and Kartei (file, in the sense of filing card).
Apple, in its wisdom, used the same word, but for some reason chose to translate the menu title differently, using the word “Ablage”. That word also has some meaning in the context of traditional filing of paper documents (which eludes me, as I’ve never had anything to do with traditional filing of paper documents). It must be a place to put things, so maybe a filing cabinet?
And by the way, a computer crash in German is an “Absturz” (from Sturz = Fall). It’s the same word used for plane crashes, but not for car crashes.
wish there was a pronunciation guide. are the double vowels like Japanese or polynesian i.e. “hoo-oo-key-eee” or is it like english for “skipping school”?
I used to work with three Senegalese (awesome co-workers, btw) but we aren’t in contact anymore : (
Well no, but an English speaker who sees the word “mouse” used to refer to the computer peripheral for the first time immediately associates it with the little thing on their desk with the (now defunct) tail. If it were called “nezumi” instead, it would be a lot less memorable.
Incidentally, pretty much all of the words you give as examples of meaningless jargon are all transliterated directly into Japanese; “Bluetooth” becomes “buru-tsu-su” etc. Pretty much all of the words in your list are examples of repurposed words that may have been obscure before computing but were recognisably part of the language. Imagine if, instead of “Bluetooth” it were “aoba” and all of the other words in your list were replaced by otherwise meaningless strings of letters which didn’t exist as signifiers of anything in your language.
It’s not that we immediately think “ah, blue tooth, that makes perfect sense” (although there are a lot of examples of that too) but that the combination of two preexisting signifiers becomes a kind of mnemonic. If I called a brand new piece of technology “dogfishface”, it would be a lot more instantly memorable for a native English speaker than if I were to call the same thing inusakanakao, even if the term itself is meaningless.
Well, picture, if you will, a culture where children are not given toy mice of any kind to play with. Is “mouse” a good analogy, or would it be better to choose a term that is a closer to local experience?
I’m not sure if this is true, or if it is a better metaphor than “pebble” or something like that. It doesn’t really matter that much, because for people learning computers today most metaphors and terminology are as illustrative and intuitive as the computer “bug” metaphor. It’s just what we call things, and knowing their origin really doesn’t help us out that much.
This is the only real argument that I can see, but even then I don’t think it’s that strong. Loan words are a part of language, and even if they don’t have the advantage of familiarity we still seem to adopt them pretty easily. Japanese adopted the word “天ぷら” from the Portuguese just fine, and we then adopted it from them as tempura. It may be less memorable than a homemade English word, but it does the trick.
We also seem to have no problem adopting previously obscure and (for most people) meaningless strings of letters like “Yahoo,” “Google,” “ebay,” etc.
