From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 18 21:16:21 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id VAA11507 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jan 1995 21:16:21 -0800 Received: from netcom8.netcom.com (bakul@netcom8.netcom.com [192.100.81.117]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) with ESMTP id VAA11501 for ; Wed, 18 Jan 1995 21:16:20 -0800 Received: from localhost by netcom8.netcom.com (8.6.9/Netcom) id VAA00764; Wed, 18 Jan 1995 21:14:29 -0800 Message-Id: <199501190514.VAA00764@netcom8.netcom.com> To: Paul Richards cc: terry@cs.weber.edu, freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: Re: Internationalization (was Re: CVS stuff) In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 19 Jan 95 01:11:47 GMT." <199501190111.BAA02956@isl.cf.ac.uk> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 95 21:14:28 -0800 From: Bakul Shah Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I wrote: > the English bias of Unix etc. is much more pervasive. How > would one translate `cat', `sh', `uucp' etc. to other > languages? Without English language background these words > make _no_ sense. But it would be equally nonsensical to Paul Richard responds: > Hmm, interesting viewpoint :-) > A cat is a small furry animal that has an annoying habit of sleeping on > clothes that have just been ironed and you were hoping to wear out that > night. Just what do you do that wears out your clothes in a night? A date with a file? You English are weirder than I thought :-) But seriously, what I was getting at is that *ideally* one would want a native language interface to unix -- file names, commands, man pages, the whole thing. Except that some things just don't translate. One can have fun with silly translations but they would be much too obscure. Bakul