D french-speaking community

[Jacob Carlborg]

On Saturday, 9 November 2013 at 10:38:52 UTC, Raphaël Jakse wrote:

> 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.

Slices happen to be bit different in every language. A slice in D 
and Ruby does not have the same behavior. Although I could say 
the same about classes, but I wouldn't feel the same need to 
explain classes.

> 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.

Another example is "e-mail". We do have an official translation 
for that, "e-post", which is a direct translation. But most 
people use "mail", yes the English word. Which actually is a bit 
weird. This is also true for people how don't have any interest 
in computers at all, but use computers. What is getting more 
common now is also to use a Swedish spelling for "mail", which 
would be "mejl".

I'm thinking like this. Many of the words used in computer 
science have a meaning outside computer science which existed 
long before, i.e. stream, thread and so on. When I'm referring to 
the concept from computer science I'm using the English word and 
when I refer to the word out side of the computer world I'm using 
the Swedish word.

When referring to a stream of water I would use "bäck" which is 
the translation of "stream" but I could never, ever use that word 
when referring to a stream sending data over the network. The 
only reason I could use "bäck" in programming if I was creating a 
class for a game which referred to an actual stream of water, but 
since I always programming in English I would use "stream" anyway.

Thread on the other I could use the Swedish translation "tråd". 
But I would most often use the English word there as well. To me 
it adds context. If I would say just "thread" to someone that 
knows programming he/she would instantly know I'm talking about 
threads in programming. If I on the other hand would just say 
"tråd" it could mean something else, like a thread used for 
sewing.

> 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.

Absolutely.