Re: A system for localizing documentation strings

[Kenichi Handa <handa@m17n.org>]

In article <ur6mudrli.fsf@gnu.org>, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> > From: Jean-Christophe Helary <fusion@mx6.tiki.ne.jp>
> > Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:22:46 +0900
> > 
> > There is absolutely _no_ need whatsoever for Japanese people to learn  
> > _any_ bit of English to become excellent programmers.

> Handa-san, could you please give us your perspective on this
> assertion?

To become an excellent programmer, one must read a code
written by the other people, and for that, English is
mandatory.  Not only comments, but also function names,
variable names, etc. are mostly based on English words.  If
they are all some random alphabets something like
"lkvkdloa", it's almost impossible to track codes.  In
addition, one have to communicate with people working on the
same fields, and if you are working on a program used
world-widely, the developper community almost always uses
English.

As for computer/programming related books, it's sure that
most important ones are translated in Japanese.  But, most
of them assumes that a reader has some basic knowledge about
English.  Many technical terms are just written in Katakana
(a phonetic transliteration from the orignal English word),
and one has to know the meaning of original English word.

---
Kenichi Handa
handa@m17n.org