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[Walter Bright]

Roberto Mariottini wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> I don't know Italian, but I've worked with German electronics tech 
>> stuff auto-translated to English. You quickly figure out that "river" 
>> really means "electric current", and "tension" really means "voltage". 
>> If your interest is getting your work done, the translators really are 
>> an aid.
> 
> Again, let me not agree.
> 
> When you are an Italian programmer, you know what a "bug" is. And even 
> if you are speaking in Italian you call it "bug". And also a "debugger" 
> is called a "debugger".
> Having the translator change this key words to "insect" and 
> "adjustment/tuning program" adds only garbage to the nonsense.
> And I can also add "template", "thread", "link", "linker" and so on.

It certainly would be helpful if there was a way to tag some terms as 
"don't translate".

> Having also the examples "translated" is another big problem.

I agree. "translated" code samples are just garbage. That's why I asked 
earlier if there was a way to mark sections as "don't translate". 
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way.


>> It's surprising how little of a hint one really needs in order to get 
>> the information you need out of a chunk of foreign language text. When 
>> I worked with the Japanese tech manuals, not only was there no 
>> translation software, the stuff was not even in the roman alphabet, 
>> but I was able to crack it by looking at the diagrams and things that 
>> are universal, like hex numbers, "RS-232", etc.
> 
> Let me add that an average Italian programmer knows enough English to 
> read programming manuals.

I'm sure that's true of most programmers. But still, there seems to be a 
demand for foreign language versions of the docs, as a couple people 
have made the effort to do them.

> Maybe you didn't notice, but none of the most 
> successful IDE has been translated into Italian, and so no Italian 
> documentation has been written for them.

Most of the interest in translations seems to come from spanish, 
portugese and japanese programmers. I have no idea if this is 
coincidence or not.

> I suggest to revise your English documentation instead: make it simpler 
> and you'll get more non-native speakers.
> 
> Another hint: I use automatic translators to ensure they can get right 
> my English. I copy and paste my English text to the translator and see 
> if it can output an acceptable Italian. Often the problem can resolved 
> simply:
>  - adding a comma or changing the order of the words
>  - using active form instead of passive
>  - adding some clarifying "of" or "to" or "that"
>  - using a synonym that the translator likes more

That's a great suggestion, but I am nowhere near proficient enough in 
another language to make this work.

> For example changing the problematic paragraph:
> "D is statically typed, and compiles direct to native code. It's 
> multiparadigm: supporting imperative, object oriented, and template 
> metaprogramming styles. It's a member of the C syntax family, and its 
> look and feel is very close to C++'s. For a quick feature comparison, 
> see this comparison of D with C, C++, C# and Java."
> 
> To the more easily translatable:
> "D is a statically typed programming language, and compiles directly to 
> machine code. It's multiparadigm, supporting many programming styles: 
> imperative, object oriented, and metaprogramming. It's a member of the C 
> syntax family, and its appearance is very similar to that of C++. For a 
> quick comparison of the features, see this comparison of D with C, C++, 
> C# and Java."
> 
> Leads to something that is more comprehensible in Italian and French 
> (I'm not sure it's correct English, though).

I'll make the changes.