Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 11 Dec 97 22:17:28 -0400
From:      "Francisco Reyes" <reyesf@super.zippo.com>
To:        "FreeBSD doc Mailing list" <doc@freebsd.org>
Subject:    Re: Spanish documentation - needed anyhow?
Message-ID:  <199712120317.TAA12299@super.zippo.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Ups. Sent this to the www mailing list by mistake.

==================BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE==================
On Thu, 11 Dec 1997 17:16:20 +0800, Greg Lehey wrote:

>> Never thought of it, but I do like the idea of finding Spanish
>> equivalents instead of using the English word.
>
>I disagree, not just with Spanish.  The French do this, too, and the
>Germans used to.

I think that if one can find a "suitable" translation there is
nothing wrong with tranlating it. If it going to be very confusing
then I would vote for keeping the English word.

You also need to remember that writing is only half the story about
how information is exchanged. It may be ok to write "buffer" or
"cache" but in other languages those words either sound funny or are
just plain awkward to pronounce.

>I spent a long time in Germany, and although I speak
>good German, I found it very helpful to have the same technical terms
>in German and in English.  One problem in particular was that you
>can't always find a suitable new (German|French|Spanish) word to
>translate a new English term, and some of the resultant attempts are
>ambiguous and just plain painful.

I think a middle ground needs to be found in tranlations. If a word
is not awkward to pronounce in the translated language and there
isn't a simple way to translate it then it could remain in English. 

Moreover, some computer terms in English have got their meaning by
convention(someone made it up and the rest have kept using it). Take
for example a word Jesus pointed out to me: "mirror". In Spanish we
could use "espejo", but it would probably be some time before people
would associate that word with the meaning it is understood in
English when talking computerese.
===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE===================





Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199712120317.TAA12299>