Why you should use English versions of your OS and other software
blog.szynalski.com
blog.szynalski.com
This isn't a panacea, as it means that there's a bit more work involved to integrate with tools like Splunk, and we obviously don't log to anything like syslog. But it makes it easier for our support people to support customers who prefer to see their messages in their native language.
We have some older components that do spit out error codes. (like COMS, error -84413994005!) Sometimes the codes aren't specific at all and I have to install a debug version to get the information I need, or rely on a graybeard programmer to help me out.
These days programs are far too complex to rely on a limited set of error codes.
Our tracing facility, on the other hand, is purely English.
Shouldn't we instead be contributing to non-English documentation so that even those who are too poor to learn English, can still learn to use a computer? Ubuntu is doing this beautifully.
I am English and live in a Spanish speaking country, and recently purchased a new laptop which had vista pre-installed in Spanish. My Spanish is good enough to not have problems using the software, but I know exactly what the article author is talking about, I've had this problem many times. Thankfully because i have a history with using English language windows so I can often guess the exact wording for the English translation; but others would not.
About Linux - internationalization is done right here, in normal day to day usage it isn't needed to know English, but still the problem is with troubleshouting - the easier to google error message the easier it is to solve problem, and error messages in Polish are harder to google.
In old times every error presented to user had an error code, that was constant across locales. I think this is very good convention - it helps with searching for informations about error without enforcing people to use software in locale that is not their native.
BTW - other good convention for error messages is to include in every error message unique string that is also dumped to logs. That way it is later easier to match stacktraces in log files with error reports from users.
If you post your error codes online in Polish, then others can find it in Polish... meaning you lower the barrier to entry for other Polish users (one less thing to learn).
The answer is not to require everyone to use English, the answer is to post more about computers in your native tongue.
Not knowing english means no access to science or post graduate education, no access to international media, no access to hacker news or important blogs, no access to international job markets or even to jobs in big domestic corporations.
Not knowing english correlates with being poor, uninformed and excluded. Localised UIs are evil.
And we do translations with Eclipse, so local characters are important.
But that's the way it is, at least we don't have two kinds of I letter, like some ohter countries :)
Having user-targeted messages hard coded is a bug.
Sterownik ekranu przestał działać, ale odzyskał sprawność.
This is a hard problem, at the same time; the translated log files[1] from work look something like this:
2009-12-13 14:21 BACK-E-00234 <text here, with optional parameter values>
It's unlikely that the message mentioned in the article was hard-coded to Polish; instead the author is arguing about users and the searchability of non-English error messages. To increase the searchability, you need to include key details (e.g., "BACK-E-00234") that make the message significantly uglier to read. One possible way around this is to make sure your error dialogs are selectable/copyable (maybe put a button to do this), but on copy silently insert the search key details.
[1] Our untranslated log files look more like:
<M ID="234" T="2009-12-13T14:21:00.00000" S="E" M="BACK">...parameter tags here...</M>Nice item for a future GUI wishlist.
You might put the key information in the dialog's window title.
Needless to say, the controls for overriding anti-aliasing or fog-table or z-buffer settings, translated to my native language, was completely incomprehensible. I still don't understand why they bothered.
That does not forbid nVidia from hiring decent translators.
And, BTW, were the software open-source, you could correct the messages for them to make sense..
Say 消除鋸齒 to computer geeks in Taiwan and they'll understand it without difficulty. Say it to non-computer people, and they won't get it... just as English-speaking non-computer people won't understand "anti-aliasing".
Assuming you're not talking about languages used by aboriginal groups who don't have computers, how could you translate a term "well" and yet come up with something that makes little sense?
In portuguese we tend to use the english words for technical terms and jargon, sometimes slightly corrupted to fit the grammar. Terms like delete, debug and commit are conjugated in as if they were regular portuguese verbs and used frequently even with acceptable translations existing. Delete in particular is quite common even among non-technical people.
For many technical terms, specially newer ones, I can't even think of any acceptable translations without it sounding silly. Most of the time they are left as-is and you need to know the jargon to understand the translation.
I much prefer to read technical documents and books in english.
That's a big problem to learn computer in foreign language (If you had context menu with items: Afgdfguw, Eetgreg, Uga, Boo, which would you choose?)
If problems occur then, anyway, regular users are not those who would try and would fix them.
For an advanced user, sure, use language you want. And if you choose your native language and if you can't find a solution to your trouble, try different keywords. Or reinstall nVidia driver in english version.
English speakers will have a hard time to understand this.
Recently I switched my parents to a Romanian version of Ubuntu and I was pretty disappointed with the state of translations. Bad wording, inconsistent translations, partial translations etc. But English is not an option for my parents. For now I try to identify translation problems and contribute patches to fix them.
(1)A large number of Chinese characters are composed of a syllable radical which originally acted as a guide to pronunciation (say, "ma") along with a context indicator which would tell the reader which of the various "ma" syllables was being used. In the original written language, it probably made perfect sense, but language drift over time have left the system essentially arbitrary in most modern Chinese languages.
[EDIT -- tried to use an asterisk there, forgetting that paired asterisks result in italics.]
And the issue is primarily due to the large online population and knowledge base of English-speaking people. You can find enough info about any topic if such population exists, i.e. I found a lot info about linux in German language, probably due to popularity of the OS in Germany.
Anyway, one reason for using English versions is that localizations are often rather strange and that GUIs or less well tested. It can easily happen that a text doesn't really fit into the space that was left for the English message.
Now imagine, you are deep into doing some work in German and you need to switch all the time between your "German" work and your "English" tools because your computer may crash and you may need to copy/paste an error message in a search engine. This is a usability disaster. I am really surprised that lot of HN readers are supporting such idea when at the same time the majority of people here have high praise for good design and usability.
I'd say, everyone needs to know English, but I wouldn't like if majority switched to English as their only language. In my opinion, other languages help us to learn history of their countries.
Yes. But I would think in the information technology domain, most of the entities don't translate very well. For example words like 'daemon', 'driver', 'segmentation fault' etc. these acquire a certain meaning that just cannot be translated easily to other languages. So you end up with half-half type mix, half of the words in English half in the native language. It ends up sounding silly.
So I hope this doesn't sound insensitive but I would rather everyone learn English, I think it will just make everything a little easier. It is like having a common API between people ;-)
Note: I guess this step isn't necessary if, unlike me, you don't suck at learning languages ;)
You will be surprised by the huge difference in search results when you forces google to search only in English.
Also try to read English language news instead of your native. You will discover, that world is much bigger than those biased and poorly translated articles you can found on a popular localized sites.
Now seriously: that's not a real reason to use the whole system in English. I do that (except for the keyboard layout, I love the Spanish one <3), but I don't think I anyone should ever do it if they don't really like/feel comfortable to. Translations are very good, so that wouldn't be a reason... and IMHO what the post describes is an acceptable risk (hey, you probably will get sorted of this, but will have to Google more than a few minutes).