D french-speaking community

[Raphaël Jakse]

Le 09/11/2013 11:28, Jacob Carlborg a écrit :
> On Saturday, 9 November 2013 at 08:32:24 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>
>> Given French's more limited vocabulary and resistance to adding new
>> words,
>> translating technical terms has got to be a royal pain (and then
>> L'Académie
>> Française gets ticked when folks use English words for new stuff). I
>> had my
>> desktop in French for a while at one point, which definitely improved my
>> vocabulary. For better or worse, a lot of technical words seem to get
>> translated very literally, which gets interesting sometimes
>> (particularly when
>> there doesn't seem to really be a direct translation available). But I
>> expect
>> that it's often the same in other languages, though maybe some of them
>> are
>> more open to just using the English word.
>
> I can tell you that when I talk about programming or computers in
> Swedish I use a lot of English words. Many words don't have a good
> translation and just sound weird. If I would to translate "slice" into
> Swedish it would probably be "skiva", especially if we're talking about
> a slice of bread. But if I would say "skiva" when talking about
> programming to someone else they would probably say "WHAT?" and have no
> idea what I'm talking about.

We surely would get the same kind of reaction for "tranche" in French. 
But you are not sure people will understand "slice" correctly, even if 
they can be kind of familiar with the word (e.g. because of the slice 
method of the Array object in Javascript). To understand "slice", maybe 
some people will even try to translate it.

I think it is just a matter of habit, and your Photoshop example tend to 
confirm it.
When you used the word one time and explained it, people will start to 
understand you, and as you use it, people will get used to it and start 
employ it. Or not, an then it is time to fall back to the Enligh version 
of the word. So why being concerned by trying the native word first? 
Well, because it is native and it can help the appropriation of the 
concept behind it for people which don't master it. Maybe I'm wrong.

For slice, it seems it is a concept to be defined for each programming 
language anyway.

It still remains important to give the English word in lessons to be 
able to communicate with the rest of the word, and to be understood by 
people who already know the English word. Agreed.


>
> I'm using all my software in English. One time I was going to use
> Photoshop at school and they had the Swedish version. I couldn't find a
> single thing by looking at the names. Just hoping you're remembering the
> locations of the buttons and the menus.
>
> --
> /Jacob Carlborg