Installing Red Star 3.0, North Korea's homegrown operating system
kevinchen.co
kevinchen.co
For example, "system memory" is translated as "시스템 메모리" in South Korean, which is basically a transcription that reads as [siseutem memori]. In contrast, the same word is translated to "체계기억기" in North Korean, which is composed of 체계(=system), 기억(=remembering), 기(=machine), as shown in the last figure.
And also, they tend to use less word spacing in general. "관리자가입정보설정" in North Korean would be written "관리자 가입 정보 설정" in South Korean. It's much alike German word compound vs. English word composition (Bundesverfassungsgericht vs. Federal Constitutional Court).
To convey a meaning, you often need new words and concepts. And when translations try to use "native" words which are new, not established and not widely understood (even if they are approved by the official body that recommends new words), they are not any more understandable - vice versa.
Translations that just use slang, typically derived from English, are more understandable.
This phenomenon is so strong that I actually prefer to use English versions of operating systems and applications, because the translations that make up their own words to "explain meaning" are complete gibberish. My wife often asks me to help with translated Microsoft software, and I tend to be at loss about what they're trying to say. If it is in English, there's no problem. If someone says it in slang that relies on words that come from the sound of English words, there's no problem.
The sad thing is there are decent technical terms translated into Danish, but no one uses them, because they never gained traction, so instead English words are used instead. I generally avoid these words when speaking, because I honestly don't like them.
Most particularly, the word 'computer' bothers me like no other when speaking Danish, that I always avoid it. Usually I use »maskine« (machine) or the original Danish word for computer, »datamat«, if I feel so inclined.
He showed Red Star and their Android version (towards the middle of the talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w703MQZcDhY
https://blog.whitehatsec.com/north-koreas-naenara-web-browse...
That one is funkier. Some ancient netscape version. The most shocking thing to me was that the whole country seem to run on a single 10.x.x.x network!
That would be the Kwangmyong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmyong_(network)
Whooaa.
One one hand it makes sense they copied -- why spend time and effort into drawing all those assets from scratch? Take the best out there, steal it and you are done.
On the other and Apple is the epitome of your capitalist, western, company -- one that would surely be decried as a failure or an example of Western evil decadence by the propaganda. Perhaps those developing this are sort of things are given a more free reign and operate outside the "propaganda" domain.
Finder, Calculator, Calendar, the top menu, etc. All really spot on.
I'm playing around in it still. Managed to find my way to the Terminal, and I'm poking around the filesystem.
It is Linux, and seems to be based on a stripped-down version of RedHat (going from some of the remnants of certain man pages).
The UI is a modified/themed KDE.
They did a really good job with the apps - for example, the calculator app is "Calculator.app", which is really a directory with a Contents/Resources, etc directories inside it; the same way OS X does it.
If that's the case wonder why they went all the way to so meticulously clone OS X UI.
> The operating system of our own style, "Red Star"
> "Red Star" OS 3.0 for users is a system of our own style, whose stability, performance, ease of use and security are achieved at a high level.