Pros and cons Localization of technical words?

Question

This question is for non-English speaking people.

This is somewhat biased because SO is an English-language web forum, so ... On the other hand, most developers will know English anyway ...

In your linguistic culture, are technical words translated into linguistic words? For example, as a "design template" or "Factory" or something else written / said in German, Spanish, etc. Etc. When using IT? Are English words preferable? Local translation? Are two versions used (english / locale)?

Edit

Could you write your answer to the language translation "Design Pattern"?

In French, according to Wikipedia.fr, this is "Patron de conception", which translates as "Conceptualization Model" (I think).

Answer 1

We have a weird mix in Brazil. Many books have been translated into Portuguese, but originals are also available. Mix this with the Internet, and basically everyone should know the terms in both languages ​​because you never know how the next person will refer to them. And until recently, most of the translations were done by some people who have no connection with IT. Some terms are simply poorly translated.

Sample design is a good example. The GoF book is called "Padrões de Projeto". But projeto means a project. Therefore, most people call it “Design Patterns,” but name the samples with translated names (Fábrica Abstrata instead of Abstract Factory, Fachada instead of Facade). And I saw how people call Design Patterns "Padrões de Desenho", as some people think that desenho (which means design too, but also draws) better reflects the software development phase.

As long as I see value in translating some terms to make the conversation more free (many, many Brazilians have some problems with “th” words. The phoneme just doesn't exist in Portuguese ...), it usually causes confusion when someone just was not subjected to any unclear translation. Obviously, it’s best to stick to the original terms. And be very strict when there is a need to use a translation, do not choose an obscure translation.

Answer 2

Coming from Switzerland and speaking German, I vote for the fact that you have saved them in English. I was at the IBM congress some time ago (OS / 2 0.9 developer conference, I0m gives my age here). At that time, most people were not familiar with the names of interface components (combobox, listbox, button), as they are today, especially not for many mainframe programmers.

So, everything was translated synchronously into different languages. And I mean everything. This suggests that:

• The wrong standard set of names was put in place
• Programmers from different countries could not talk to each other.
• It was very difficult to follow the negotiations, especially if you had some previous knowledge.

The only thing that could be done was ears covered with headphones, listening to the original English speech and trying to put the English names of things in the right place in the German translation. It was so weird.

Answer 3

You can translate words into another language, but you usually don’t translate the mindset to which they belong (why good translations cost a lot of money). Technical terms that create an obvious group in one language may also strip them of linguistic connection in other languages.

One of the worst examples I regularly stumble upon is the word “experience,” which is common in a US sales letter. Nowadays, everything is felt. Now, some people are translating it into German "Erfahrung", and it just sounds awful because it doesn't fit anything in German thinking. We do not think to use a tool or software like Erfahrung. The word can be translated correctly, but completely excluded taking into account thinking.

Edit answer: German for the "design pattern" is Entwurfsmuster. It is sometimes used in lectures and presentations. My almost daily fun event is translating English "quit" as the Germanic verb "caste". Since casting in C / C ++ has long been considered evil and causes many errors, casting is usually a problem. Now the “caste” sounds phonetically identical to the German name “Karsten”. Therefore, whenever casting is the cause of an error, I can notice that all this was caused by Karsten;)

Answer 4

I am from Austria, so I studied German as the first language.

The Design Pattern becomes “Entwurfsmuster”, which is a pretty decent translation that doesn't lose so much in translation, but we all use the English “original” here in Austria, even people who speak terrible English use English words. Makes it easier ....

For completeness: it’s not entirely correct that only the rest of the world uses English terms, “you also use some“ alien ”words:

• (my favorite :) Gedankenexperiment seems to be well known
• eigenvalues and eigenvectors in mathematics
• Kindergarden affiliated with German Kindergarten

And lately, I pounced on a site called: übernote from the German word über .

Answer 5

No thanks. Leave English specifications. Translation is uncomfortable, usually ugly and confusing.

Sometimes I have the opposite problem here in Italy. You try not to mix English and Italian ... that's why the methods and classes are called "findUserBySocialSecurityNumber", "delete", etc. But business terms are often impossible to translate (the Italian unique identification code is "Codice Fiscale", which is not a social security number or something else), so there are often methods called "findUserByCodiceFiscale", which, I admit, are pretty stupid. :)

EDIT : a design sample in Italian can be translated into a pro progtazione scheme (or struttura di progettazione, according to Wikipedia ), but I never heard about this in conversations.

Answer 6

Most IT professionals in Poland use English terms, the Polish language is used only when communicating with business or users.

Personally, I tend to set the language standard on all my computers to English - I know what word is used in the English manual, but I'm not sure how it was translated in the Polish version.

At my university, all the lectures were in Polish, sometimes we had no idea when the teacher used some translated terminology (for example, "scron compiler" [cross-compiler] or "meek" [database record]).

"Design Patterns" translated into Polish are "wzorce projektowe".

Answer 7

In my tech blog, everything is translated into French. Using English words for calculations, simply because most of the concepts that were invented in the United States would be as stupid as using only German words for printing (because of Gutenberg) or Greek words for politics.

Of course, like any rule, there are exceptions. Sometimes it’s hard to find a good translation (I use “bit” and “pizza”, not a French translation). And it's better to have a translation than a bad one (for example, "toile" for "web", a serious translation error).

Answer 8

What I usually do is Danish-sify (I'm from denmark), or use Danish words for IT terms when talking to business people or ordinary people who are not people. If these are IT people, I just use English terms.

Answer 9

I am not an English speaker from Germany.

In my opinion, it makes no sense to translate programming-related words from English into another language. At the university (although it is located in Germany) almost all the lectures were in English, all good programming books are written in English, the most important websites (for example, this one ;-)) use English. Thus, from the very beginning you get used to the terms “design template” and “factory”. Sometimes I don’t even understand that I use some English technical words when I speak German with my colleagues.

And it is also very useful when you are a member of a team with people from different countries, because you have a common "language", and everyone understands what they mean by talking about "factory".

Answer 10

In addition to other good answers, I would add that the written code transliterated from another language is simply bad. It makes the code awkward and complicated, everyone translates it differently (even speaking the same language), and when it comes to multinational teams, it becomes impossible to understand. This includes variables, class and function names, even comments ...
I did code reviews for Dutch teams, Turkish teams, teams around the world — we really had to hire translators to explain the code to us. This gets rather ridiculous because the translator does not understand the code ... (in the end, we gave up and the local team gave us some keywords, but still ...)

If the coding conventions are localized, it becomes impossible to understand - even localized in the language I speak!

Answer 11

Oh, please keep them in English. I am a non-native English speaker from Germany, and I always start to giggle when I come across German texts with technical terms translated into German.

My personal favorite is the German translation for the stack:

Stack translates to Keller Datenspeicher. Translating this into English will give you something like a basement data store. (Uh - where is the stack and what does this have to do with the basement?) No young programmer here understands German anachronisms anymore.

Stackoverflow translates to Keller Datenspeicher Überlauf btw. (Basement vault overflow)

Answer 12

I think that technical terms should be kept in their original language, which is English anyway. I remember lectures on operating systems - in particular, on virtual memory, and they talked about tilings. I thought: “What the hell? There is tile in my kitchen and my bathroom, but not in my memory!” and ended up deeply embarrassed. Later I realized that they were translating memories ridiculously. Similar "interesting" translations are related to stockpiles for heap, basement for stack and other things that I forgot.
In general, I think the translation may be friendly to users who do not know what you're talking about. Someone else will know the “real” term much better, even if he does not, he will find more information with the “real” term.

I do not think that there is a real flaw in this. Doctors also have their own technical language, and even builders have their own language, so why don't programmers have a special language for them? You simply cannot talk to the surgeon without knowing the term “cut” (I cannot find a good example because I do not know their language), and thus you cannot talk to the programmer about what he is doing, not Knowing the term “design pattern,” “factory,” or “minimized binary decision diagram.” If you do not, accept that you cannot talk to the programmer or ask him about the basics and learn more about the terms yourself.

Answer 13

I think that technical terms should be kept in their original language, which is English in almost any case.

Let's see: The stack was first proposed in 1955, and then patented in 1957 by the German computer scientist Friedrich L. Bauer . So, everything is all over the world: from now on, use "Stapelspeicher" instead of "stack" and "Stapelspeicherüberlauf" instead of "stackoverflow";) (pay attention to yourself: check if stapelspeicherüberlauf.de is available ...)

But I agree that it is better to use (and I) English words, as they are known everywhere.

Answer 14

I am Italian and I think the technical words translated by the sounds are completely ridiculous!

It’s better to stick to the English version, also for clarity: everyone knows (needs to know) which design patterns, but the “progetation scheme” is somehow more obscure.

Answer 15

While I am an English speaker, I work for a Swiss company based in France. In my experience, most people use English terms. The French government is trying to impose French terms, but no one pays attention.

Answer 16

Swedish design template - designmönster. Thus, it works quite well, like many other translations, but many just look stupid. Usually, swedes has a pretty good understanding of English, so in a conversation it tends to be a kind of combination of Swedish, English terms and sometimes swenglish terms - usually English words with Swedish grammar :)

"Have you taken the branch?" becomes "Har du committat branchen?"

The code must be all English. The localized variable names are EVIL.

Answer 17

My native language is Arabic and I also speak French / English.

Arabic is one of the most difficult languages ​​for technical terms ... I prefer to stick to the English version of Tech word i Find users who are familiar with technical terms in English more than Arabic (at least the ones I have dealt with) however Arabic use of terms should be for legal reasons, so somehow we have to come to terms with some software tools

We used to play a small game in the Technical Department, which is “Guess the Arabic Synonym,” and we laughed at the unexpected word that a bunch of brilliant guys didn’t know, so imagine how users would look

Answer 18

Danish design patterns would be something like "designmønstre", but I never saw anyone use it.

With less than 6 million native speakers worldwide, most computer technologies are not being translated into Danish. Instead, English terms are used. This, obviously, makes it easier for the reader to search for other international sources on this issue, but also leaves the original language somewhat distorted by foreign terms.

Answer 19

Italian. Typically, Italian programmers prefer to use English names for things, although they often mistakenly use them (like most English words). The main reasons for this are:

• Some terms are used only in English form, and it is difficult or impossible to translate them: stack , for example.

• Some words sound better in the English form: matrice (matrix) is a translation for array , but it's rather unusual because it sounds bad.

Design pattern translates with schema di progettazione .