Re: character sets as they relate to “Raw†string literals for elisp

[Daniel Brooks <db48x@db48x.net>]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> My native language is Swedish, and I do work professionally among other
> things as a translator from English to Swedish.  I have also attempted
> translating technical documentation, but usually give up because it's
> just too hard.
>
> Let me just say this, with regards to a fully multi-lingual Emacs.
>
> In almost all free software projects I have seen, the Swedish
> translation is shockingly poor.  It is so bad, in fact, that I often
> think it would be better to just delete it outright.  This work is
> usually done by volunteers that are trying their best, out of genuine
> love and commitment, which obviously makes such a conversation somewhat
> delicate.

Ouch. Things do look rather nicer in my optimistic visions.

> Even multilingual messages would be a large effort, and in the case of
> Emacs it is still not clear that it would be of much use.  You would
> immediately run into the brick-wall of English documentation, English
> symbols, etc. etc.

This is certainly true. In the ideal multilingual Emacs in my head
everything is translated, even the source code (well, at least the elisp
source). Every symbol has an English name as well as translated names,
and when you visit a source file the translated names for your language
are transparently swapped in and everything is reindented so that it
looks right. Then when you save, the reverse transformation is
applied. Translated command names would be used in the UI and
substituted into the documentation in the same way we already do for key
bindings.

Obviously since that can’t all happen at once there would be a
significant period of time when the translations would be very
incomplete. After catching up there would always be a fringe of new
contributions that aren’t yet fully translated; new contributions to
ELPA and so on.

db48x