Emacs i18n

Emacs i18n

[Narendra Joshi]

Hi everyone,

Recently I was asked if Emacs can be configured to use a different language
in its interface, e.g. menu bars, org mode agenda, days of the week, etc. I
tried finding out if it is possible but only found documentation on
language environments. Are there translations for Emacs in other languages?


Best regards,
Narendra

Re: Emacs i18n

[Thibaut Verron]

Hi,

The days of the week in org timestamp cookies try to follow your
locale settings.

I'm not aware of any other part of Emacs which would be localized.

Best wishes,
Thibaut

Le sam. 17 juil. 2021 à 11:27, Narendra Joshi <narendraj9@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Recently I was asked if Emacs can be configured to use a different language
> in its interface, e.g. menu bars, org mode agenda, days of the week, etc. I
> tried finding out if it is possible but only found documentation on
> language environments. Are there translations for Emacs in other languages?
>
>
> Best regards,
> Narendra

Re: Emacs i18n

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Narendra Joshi <narendraj9@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 11:27:14 +0200
> 
> Are there translations for Emacs in other languages?

No, not at this time.  Translating the Emacs UI is a non-trivial
project, as past discussions have indicated, for several good reasons.
No one started to work on that seriously, AFAIK.

We do have the ngettext function, but (a) it has limited scope of only
supporting localization of echo-area and minibuffer messages; (b) it
is called only in a small number of places; and (c) we don't yet have
message catalogs, nor have we figured out how to distribute them in a
way that would allow a package to come with its own message catalog.

(Btw, "translation" in the UI context are not generally referred to as
"i18n", but as "localization", "l10n".)

Re: Emacs i18n

[mrf]

Eli Zaretskii writes:

> No, not at this time.  Translating the Emacs UI is a non-trivial
> project, as past discussions have indicated, for several good reasons.
> No one started to work on that seriously, AFAIK.
>
> We do have the ngettext function, but (a) it has limited scope of only
> supporting localization of echo-area and minibuffer messages; (b) it
> is called only in a small number of places; and (c) we don't yet have
> message catalogs, nor have we figured out how to distribute them in a
> way that would allow a package to come with its own message catalog.


Is UI Strings in C code fully translatable (especially in gtk UI
although I think they are fewer than elisp ones)?

Do you talk about elisp part of code when you say It is limited?

Re: Emacs i18n

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: mrf <joinlaw@cock.li>
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 16:32:08 +0300
> 
> Is UI Strings in C code fully translatable

No.  But those are indeed the minority; the vast majority is in Lisp.

> Do you talk about elisp part of code when you say It is limited?

It doesn't matter.  What does matter is that the echo-area messages,
whether they come from C or Lisp, are a small part of the text that
Emacs presents to the user as part of the UI.  We have special buffers
(like *Help* and *Apropos*) where we show information which won't fit
the echo-area, we have menus and dialogs, we have tooltips, etc. etc.
The names of commands and user options are all in English, and those
names have mnemonic value.

Let's face it: the classic i10n framework doesn't really work for a
program such as Emacs, which interacts with users via so many
different means.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le samedi 17 juillet 2021, 16:01:11 CEST Eli Zaretskii a écrit :
> > From: mrf <joinlaw@cock.li>
> > Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> > Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 16:32:08 +0300
> > 
> > Is UI Strings in C code fully translatable
> 
> No.  But those are indeed the minority; the vast majority is in Lisp.
> 
> > Do you talk about elisp part of code when you say It is limited?
> 
> It doesn't matter.  What does matter is that the echo-area messages,
> whether they come from C or Lisp, are a small part of the text that
> Emacs presents to the user as part of the UI.  We have special buffers
> (like *Help* and *Apropos*) where we show information which won't fit
> the echo-area, we have menus and dialogs, we have tooltips, etc. etc.
> The names of commands and user options are all in English, and those
> names have mnemonic value.
> 
> Let's face it: the classic i10n framework doesn't really work for a
> program such as Emacs, which interacts with users via so many
> different means.

Translating emacs would require to translate many identifiers, it would 
actually amount to translate a programming language, which has very rarely 
been done.  It usually only has been done through keyword, and translation 
of standard library, and mostly for education purposes, while any other 
use than educational is weirdly considered to be “professional” (while 
education wouldn’t?) hence to enables international collaboration, hence 
english.

I once heard from a friend called Jean-Philippe de Mengual aka Texou that 
he wanted to translate emacs but couldn’t because he rightfully heard that 
would mean translate commands and identifiers and programs, etc. 

It was a pity because he often runs a lot of accessibility-oriented work 
especially about blindness (as he’s blind too), and emacs through 
emacspeak is well reknown as a wonderful vocal desktop (it wouldn’t 
surprise me that it would be the most efficient and useful vocal interface 
in the world).  This is likely to amount to emacs’ extensibility, which 
enables to freely, and without permission nor (to a limited extent) 
coordination, implement new paradigms, such as advice-oriented programming 
(which emacspeak ubiquitously use, so that it keeps working while 
modifying almost all emacs behavior, while staying in sync with mainline 
emacs).

Emacspeak is sort of wonderful and sooo complete I guess because of 
dogfeeding, its dev uses it for everything… but dogfeeding has its limits, 
and afaik he’s amero-indian, so english is his native language… and indeed 
emacspeak is most likely the best UI for english-speaking people… as is 
emacs.

It is no new that english, on par (or even more) than technical skills, is 
a great bareer to user-friendliness of a program.  So if emacs could be 
translated, it could gain a loooot more users… on the other side, that 
would break compatibility between many user extensions which would be 
divided between them because of language bareer…  But what evolution 
theory teaches is that more barieer also means more diversity, more 
mutations, hence more ideas.  Plus that would represent programs written 
by non-english-speakers, that wouldn’t have been written at all otherwise, 
so no loss.

But the greatest and first difficulty is that emacs is big and fast, so it 
should be done progressively, from the low level up, so APIs should be 
clearly divided, and modular… while emacs lisp still lacks any proper 
namespace system u.u

Another further difficulty is that not only translation is hard, but it is 
also somewhat contextual… sometimes, in a .po file, you need to go back to 
the source to see the context (and sometimes even run the program! to see 
the context of use) to understand how to translate… unfortunately, 
translating a program would require to understand even more context!  So 
it would need a special UI to fully see the original program while 
translating, otherwise it would be a mess, because any inconsistent 
translation would imply a bug

A special would be even more needed so you only translate strings/
identifiers at their definition.  So that when low-level API X and Y has 
been translated, some high-level API Z that would use X and Y would 
already have its “working” translated, and what would need to be 
translated would only be new defined identifiers: first and foremost 
“exported” ones (first prompts, menu bars, commands, docstrings) and then 
the “less useful”, “secondary”, “required to hack” stuff (internal 
functions, variable names, etc.).

This has never been done anywhere, but I can see how the first place where 
that would be really needed would be emacs, and the place where it would 
be the easiest to implement would also be emacs.  And if emacs succeed, it 
would either be very difficult elsewhere and thus emacs (maybe other lisps 
in general) would have a significant advantage, either it would spread from 
emacs and gives emacs hackability great advertisement.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Alexandre Garreau wrote:

> Translating emacs would require to translate many
> identifiers, it would actually amount to translate
> a programming language

I don't think anyone suggests doing that, I think what can be
translated is *the interface*, so for example in the menu
"Quit" or "Exit" or whatever it says (I'm not a menu user)
_that_ would be translated. I don't think there are a lot of
advantages doing this, and I do see some DISadvantages, so
I think it shouldn't be done, actually, but the suggestion
isn't "translate everything", that would be an insane, almost,
rather than a bad suggestion.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 18, 2021, at 5:57, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> Alexandre Garreau wrote:
> 
>> Translating emacs would require to translate many
>> identifiers, it would actually amount to translate
>> a programming language
> 
> I don't think anyone suggests doing that, I think what can be
> translated is *the interface*, so for example in the menu
> "Quit" or "Exit" or whatever it says (I'm not a menu user)
> _that_ would be translated.

Along with the help and the other user-facing strings (for ex, some strings in package.el)

Doing the UI only is not useful. The UI and the help would be tremendously useful.

-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le dimanche 18 juillet 2021, 00:06:03 CEST Jean-Christophe Helary a écrit 
:
> > On Jul 18, 2021, at 5:57, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU
> > Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:> 
> > Alexandre Garreau wrote:
> >> Translating emacs would require to translate many
> >> identifiers, it would actually amount to translate
> >> a programming language
> > 
> > I don't think anyone suggests doing that, I think what can be
> > translated is *the interface*, so for example in the menu
> > "Quit" or "Exit" or whatever it says (I'm not a menu user)
> > _that_ would be translated.
> 
> Along with the help and the other user-facing strings (for ex, some
> strings in package.el)
> 
> Doing the UI only is not useful. The UI and the help would be
> tremendously useful.

For me, a great deal of emacs UI are command + docstring, and I bet a 
great deal of menu comes from command and variable names…

But that makes me think that something really useful would be translating 
the manual, especially the less changing parts u.u

Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 18, 2021, at 7:55, Alexandre Garreau <galex-713@galex-713.eu> wrote:
> 
> Le dimanche 18 juillet 2021, 00:06:03 CEST Jean-Christophe Helary a écrit 
> :
>>> On Jul 18, 2021, at 5:57, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU
>>> Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:> 
>>> Alexandre Garreau wrote:
>>>> Translating emacs would require to translate many
>>>> identifiers, it would actually amount to translate
>>>> a programming language
>>> 
>>> I don't think anyone suggests doing that, I think what can be
>>> translated is *the interface*, so for example in the menu
>>> "Quit" or "Exit" or whatever it says (I'm not a menu user)
>>> _that_ would be translated.
>> 
>> Along with the help and the other user-facing strings (for ex, some
>> strings in package.el)
>> 
>> Doing the UI only is not useful. The UI and the help would be
>> tremendously useful.
> 
> For me, a great deal of emacs UI are command + docstring, and I bet a 
> great deal of menu comes from command and variable names…
> 
> But that makes me think that something really useful would be translating 
> the manual, especially the less changing parts u.u

Bienvenu au club.

https://traduc.org/Emacs



-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

> Bienvenu au club.

Plan jihad in you spare time please.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Alexandre Garreau <galex-713@galex-713.eu>
> Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 00:55:48 +0200
> 
> For me, a great deal of emacs UI are command + docstring, and I bet a 
> great deal of menu comes from command and variable names…

No, it doesn't, at least not by and large.

> But that makes me think that something really useful would be translating 
> the manual, especially the less changing parts u.u

Translating the manuals is a no-brainer, and doesn't need any
infrastructure (except the method of installing manuals in different
languages on the same system, but that issue is not specific to Emacs,
it's a general Texinfo issue).

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Alexandre Garreau wrote:

> But that makes me think that something really useful would
> be translating the manual, especially the less changing
> parts

The usefulness of that: zéro

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

> Doing the UI only is not useful. The UI and the help would
> be tremendously useful.

Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.
It happened everywhere, including diplomacy, but in particular
it happened in the world of computers. Where we happen to be
right now. There is no miniature world of computers where
everyone speaks French or any other language who badly needs
translations, drop it.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Thibaut Verron]

Le lun. 19 juil. 2021 à 04:00, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU
Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> a écrit :
>
> Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>
> > Doing the UI only is not useful. The UI and the help would
> > be tremendously useful.
>
> Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.
> It happened everywhere, including diplomacy,

Don't diplomats have interprets?

> but in particular
> it happened in the world of computers. Where we happen to be
> right now. There is no miniature world of computers where
> everyone speaks French or any other language who badly needs
> translations, drop it.

You've clearly never been to France. :) More seriously, a lot of
people in China and Japan, including in the software industry, do not
speak English. Translations would be very useful for them.

And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel confident
with English treat the lack of available translations as a significant
hurdle, or even a barrier. That's true for a lot of things, from
scientific literature to, yes, software documentation.

Your replies in this thread strike me as unusually hostile. Why is it
such a big problem that some want to translate the emacs help and
manual?

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Thibaut Verron wrote:

>> Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.
>> It happened everywhere, including diplomacy,
>
> Don't diplomats have interprets?

They used to speak French, now they speak English.

We see traces of this in for example the Euro Vision Song
Contest where they tell the score in English and French.

But numbers don't lie, pick up a book from your bookshelf and
have a look, find a ISBN number with 13 digits (a so-called
ISBN-13, they start with 978- or 979 which is the GS1 prefix),
and tell me, what is the number immediately following the
GS1 prefix - i.e., the 4th number?

Please, just deal with it and go on, this is so embarrassing
every time it comes up :(

> You've clearly never been to France. :)

I've been to France, I've been to Belgium, I've met French and
Belgian programmers, French and Belgian students, French and
Belgian activists [1] (that has nothing to do with computers,
even), they _all_ speak very good English! Just like you two
guys do!

> More seriously, a lot of people in China and Japan,
> including in the software industry, do not speak English.

Wrong! They do, and they do even more and better for each
year, and the very small group who don't, well, they have
a HUGE problem that should be fixed by them putting ALL their
efforts learning English as soon as possible - it is
*impossible* to be a tech/science person 2021 and not knowing
English - luckily, this isn't the case, but if there were more
people like you translating stuff not even then could you
ever, ever do it to any extent that would mean a positive to
those very few who don't know English, it would be a NEGATIVE
since they would only have access to a small fraction of the
material available, and in the worst case they would be
deluding themselves thinking they are so great, while actually
living in a bubble 10 000 miles behind everyone else!

Luckily this isn't the case at all - French tech people and
French people in general have no problem whatsoever mastering
English, they want to do it, they benefit from it, everyone
else benefit from it, and most of all, it is the REALITY that
we have that everyone needs to accept for their own benefit!

Speak French to people on the street all you want - of course
- but the language of science and technology 2021 is English,
Anglo-American, and to a large extent American English (writhe
"color" in source, not "colour", however write that in the UK
tabloids, by all means). It _is_ English and I don't care who
had a lousy colonial empire or not...

> Translations would be very useful for them.

No, on the contrary, it would be a negative to them.

> And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel
> confident with English treat the lack of available
> translations as a significant hurdle, or even a barrier.

100% incorrect.

> Your replies in this thread strike me as unusually hostile.
> Why is it such a big problem that some want to translate the
> emacs help and manual?

Yes, because I've heard this so many times before, all the
incorrect arguments, and it is bit provoking that it is ALWAYS
the French who brings this up no matter what e-mail list or
what tent on G8 in Rostock you are on! Every meeting, start
with a vote which the French guys insist on (despite speaking
English), French people propose French as the language (what
a surprise) and then get voted down 21-4, 14-3, 45-11
every time.

Why aren't the Russian, German and so on people who are also
part of huge language and language groups making this "French
case" you think?

Can it be that they are a bit more modest with respect to
their own language? Or do they simply understand like everyone
else what a huge benefit it is to them _and everyone_ with
a common langauge for science and technology, and they are
enthusiastic about learning this for their own
information-input but also the ambition to give their own
information-output?

Which, BTW, is exactly like the French are, so why on Earth
keep up with this charade?

#@$%&!

PS. ha :)

[1] https://dataswamp.org/~incal/blog/index.html

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le mercredi 21 juillet 2021, 07:24:36 CEST Emanuel Berg via Users list for 
the GNU Emacs text editor a écrit :
> Thibaut Verron wrote:
> >> Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.
> >> It happened everywhere, including diplomacy,
> > 
> > Don't diplomats have interprets?
> 
> They used to speak French, now they speak English.
> 
> We see traces of this in for example the Euro Vision Song
> Contest where they tell the score in English and French.

you are trying to demonstrate english is the most dominant language, 
*that* is embarrassing: why are you trying to demonstrate the obvious 
while everybody already agrees? it would be as embarassing as someone 
trying to demonstrate very hard that north america + europe is more 
powerful than the rest of the globe combined… okay, so what? is there any 
pride in it? nobody even *questioned* it here.

> Please, just deal with it and go on, this is so embarrassing
> every time it comes up :(

you are not the final authority on what is supposed to be embarrassing u.u

> > You've clearly never been to France. :)
> 
> I've been to France, I've been to Belgium, I've met French and
> Belgian programmers, French and Belgian students, French and
> Belgian activists [1] (that has nothing to do with computers,
> even), they _all_ speak very good English! Just like you two
> guys do!

you’ve been mostly with educated people, not with people who struggle 
learning, or are in less educated portion of society.

but you could ignore them in two ways: saying “enough people know about 
computer science, we don’t need more” (many people will disagree), and 
saying “emacs is only for programmers” (same…).  But this is getting 
repetitive, you are purposedly avoiding relevant arguments u.u

> > More seriously, a lot of people in China and Japan,
> > including in the software industry, do not speak English.
> 
> Wrong! They do, and they do even more and better for each
> year, and the very small group who don't,

no really try going to these places, most of people really don’t.  it’s 
logical you’ve been to europe, but there is even worse.

Actually, try even to go to eastern europe: the situation is “better” than 
in eastern asia, but still a looooot “worse” than rest of europe.

> well, they have
> a HUGE problem that should be fixed by them putting ALL their
> efforts learning English as soon as possible - it is
> *impossible* to be a tech/science person 2021 and not knowing
> English

it seems to me both of you are mixing two different matters: tech/science 
people and general people.  general people most often don’t master english 
as good as us, and of course the situation is better for english in tech/
science.

now I know I’m not the only one who believe it’s not bad that it’s 
possible to do science/tech without english.  I mean people in the 
influence spheres of china and russia do that commonly.  and yet I’m for 
globalization, but this is some sort of dogmatism that seems weird to me… 
why imposing stuff to people? if something is so important, the compressed 
version of it will eventually be translated to english and reach the wider 
world anyway…

> - luckily, this isn't the case, but if there were more
> people like you translating stuff not even then could you
> ever, ever do it to any extent that would mean a positive to
> those very few who don't know English, it would be a NEGATIVE
> since they would only have access to a small fraction of the
> material available,

a fraction that would not have been available before, I don’t see how 
that’s negative

> Luckily this isn't the case at all - French tech people and
> French people in general have no problem whatsoever mastering
> English,

of course we don’t, 75% of your vocabulary comes from our language, the 
only issue is when you need to speak it aloud… once you become fluent at 
it, you just resign to your eternal inferiority at not being able to 
distinguish 22 different vowels (and french is not really better with 17 
vowels among whose 4 nasals), added to the common stress, insecurity and 
other psychological issues that are really common among frenches about 
languages in general

> they want to do it, they benefit from it, everyone
> else benefit from it, and most of all, it is the REALITY that
> we have that everyone needs to accept for their own benefit!

so it is… so why do you need to claim it so loud and verbosely? I’d really 
like to know, I’ve never observed that reaction yet

Is it that you are particularely afraid about translation? does it sound 
like something obscurantist to you?

> > And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel
> > confident with English treat the lack of available
> > translations as a significant hurdle, or even a barrier.
> 
> 100% incorrect.

how do you know? I mean yet asserting something may need a little proof… 
denying it (as the existence of anything) would need a lot more than that: 
how can you be so assertive about it?

> > Your replies in this thread strike me as unusually hostile.
> > Why is it such a big problem that some want to translate the
> > emacs help and manual?
> 
> Yes, because I've heard this so many times before, all the
> incorrect arguments, and it is bit provoking that it is ALWAYS
> the French who brings this up no matter what e-mail list or
> what tent on G8 in Rostock you are on! Every meeting, start
> with a vote which the French guys insist on (despite speaking
> English), French people propose French as the language (what
> a surprise) and then get voted down 21-4, 14-3, 45-11
> every time.

this is really hillarous (I’ve heard it so many times but never saw it 
myself yet), it recalls me some really hillarous excerpt from some czeck 
writer, Kundera.

> Why aren't the Russian, German and so on people who are also
> part of huge language and language groups making this "French
> case" you think?

why german? I would have said russian and mandarin and spanish.

especially russian actually.

actually it happens, but around russia.

it’s weird it happens more often for russian than spanish, while spanish 
is considered easier, and simpler to speak.

> Can it be that they are a bit more modest with respect to
> their own language? Or do they simply understand like everyone
> else what a huge benefit it is to them _and everyone_ with
> a common langauge for science and technology,

there always have been a common language, don’t worry, be it greek, latin, 
english, there always will be one, that’s natural, there’s nothing to be 
afraid about.

> Which, BTW, is exactly like the French are, so why on Earth
> keep up with this charade?

good question, do you think they’re aren’t the same french? what are the 
sociological differences you noticed between each groups?

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Alexandre Garreau wrote:

> you've been mostly with educated people, not with people who
> struggle learning, or are in less educated portion
> of society.

But the case is people don't know it good enough!

You guys on the other hand know it so well you can even do
professional translations...

So you, the Elysium ones, will attempt to help the ignorant
masses by translating ... uhm, CS and programming software
manuals?!

Hey, just a suggestion, shouldn't you elite guys instead try
to bring literacy, basic math, and punctuality, to your poor
countrymen that cannot read English 2021?

Hahah THE FRENCH, the guys with the French Revolution, the
Enlightenment Movement, the Paris Commune, even the supersonic
airliner the Concorde :) HAHAHAH :D

OKAY I know this isn't what you mean because it doesn't make
any sense whatsoever, but it is how it sounds, I still don't
understand what you actually mean TBH ???

>> Which, BTW, is exactly like the French are, so why on Earth
>> keep up with this charade?
>
> good question, do you think they’re aren’t the same french?
> what are the sociological differences you noticed between
> each groups?

The French were probably used to everyone speaking French and
if there was a foreigner around either it was an international
guy who spoke French or some other type of international guy,
namely from the French colonial empire, and everyone loved and
spoke great beautiful and cultural French and there was never
any other annoying other language around to mess up this
orderly and fantastic state that everyone was happy with?

No, I don't know actually, but that would be one guess that
comes to hand, yes. So, if you don't want it to, yeah, stop
brining this up, is what I'd do.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 9:45 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Alexandre Garreau wrote:
> 
> > you've been mostly with educated people, not with people who
> > struggle learning, or are in less educated portion
> > of society.
> 
> But the case is people don't know it good enough!
> 
> You guys on the other hand know it so well you can even do
> professional translations...
> 
> So you, the Elysium ones, will attempt to help the ignorant
> masses by translating ... uhm, CS and programming software
> manuals?!
> 
> Hey, just a suggestion, shouldn't you elite guys instead try
> to bring literacy, basic math, and punctuality, to your poor
> countrymen that cannot read English 2021?

Should not local schools do that?

I can function in one or two languages, but still not under any obligation
to bring literacy and mathematical expression.  I can certainly bring clarity
but I mostly do it in english.  If one wants to be a disciple of a guru, one
has to go beyond one's limitations, rather than expecting the guru to sustain
their ego. 
 
> Hahah THE FRENCH, the guys with the French Revolution, the
> Enlightenment Movement, the Paris Commune, even the supersonic
> airliner the Concorde :) HAHAHAH :D
> 
> OKAY I know this isn't what you mean because it doesn't make
> any sense whatsoever, but it is how it sounds, I still don't
> understand what you actually mean TBH ???
> 
> >> Which, BTW, is exactly like the French are, so why on Earth
> >> keep up with this charade?
> >
> > good question, do you think they’re aren’t the same french?
> > what are the sociological differences you noticed between
> > each groups?
> 
> The French were probably used to everyone speaking French and
> if there was a foreigner around either it was an international
> guy who spoke French or some other type of international guy,
> namely from the French colonial empire, and everyone loved and
> spoke great beautiful and cultural French and there was never
> any other annoying other language around to mess up this
> orderly and fantastic state that everyone was happy with?
> 
> No, I don't know actually, but that would be one guess that
> comes to hand, yes. So, if you don't want it to, yeah, stop
> brining this up, is what I'd do.
> 
> -- 
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
> 
> 
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

>>> you've been mostly with educated people, not with people
>>> who struggle learning, or are in less educated portion
>>> of society.
>> 
>> But the case is people don't know it good enough!
>> 
>> You guys on the other hand know it so well you can even do
>> professional translations...
>> 
>> So you, the Elysium ones, will attempt to help the ignorant
>> masses by translating ... uhm, CS and programming software
>> manuals?!
>> 
>> Hey, just a suggestion, shouldn't you elite guys instead
>> try to bring literacy, basic math, and punctuality, to your
>> poor countrymen that cannot read English 2021?
>
> Should not local schools do that?

Of course. The schools, the societies.

Speaking frankly, our French Emacs guys should do their
professions to the ever improving best of their abilities, and
when that is done ... uhm, there is something that comes to
mind ... their families? unsure, does that make sense?

If they have ANY time left after that there is one and only
one allowed activity: Emacs and Elisp.

Translate huge books from English to French? Oh no, can't
have that. Nop-e. 403 Forbidden. Is what it is!

Possible loophole: What if they use Emacs while translating?
Allowed, but only if they spend at least 50% of the time not
actually translating but instead working on perfecting the
Elisp CAT software and associated English-French database (and
French-English for that matter, we just reverse the lists and
transpose the matrixes). This is how far I got BTW, and there
is more on that from the people on this list...

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/ecat-incal.el

Please use it as a ... head start!

I think this is an area where FOSS and GNU/Linux (BSD etc) and
Emacs is a little bit behind, so if you guys can put us on the
top there just like with Gnus for mail we are, inspired by the
ideology of techno-totalitarianism perhaps, willing to grant
certain favors and exceptions, to show our appreciation.
Maybe a compromise, can you write the manual simultaneously in
several languages, in English _and_ French for example?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le mercredi 21 juillet 2021, 14:08:13 CEST Emanuel Berg via Users list for 
the GNU Emacs text editor a écrit :
> Possible loophole: What if they use Emacs while translating?

of cooourse, what else? haha

first form of encouragement, that’s good

> Allowed, but only if they spend at least 50% of the time not
> actually translating but instead working on perfecting the
> Elisp CAT software and associated English-French database (and
> French-English for that matter, we just reverse the lists and
> transpose the matrixes). This is how far I got BTW, and there
> is more on that from the people on this list...

the mapping aren’t bijective… actually nor injective nor surjective, I 
mean there is no perfect mapping from one language to another :/ and 
french is particularely nasty in that it tends to *very* quickly develop 
false friends, especially wrt english (it’s pretty astounishing O.o)

>   https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/ecat-incal.el
> 
> Please use it as a ... head start!
> 
> I think this is an area where FOSS and GNU/Linux (BSD etc) and
> Emacs is a little bit behind, so if you guys can put us on the
> top there just like with Gnus for mail we are, inspired by the
> ideology of techno-totalitarianism perhaps, willing to grant
> certain favors and exceptions, to show our appreciation.
> Maybe a compromise, can you write the manual simultaneously in
> several languages, in English _and_ French for example?

would be cool…

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 5:24 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Thibaut Verron wrote:
>
> >> Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.
> >> It happened everywhere, including diplomacy,
> >
> > Don't diplomats have interprets?
>
> They used to speak French, now they speak English.
>
> We see traces of this in for example the Euro Vision Song
> Contest where they tell the score in English and French.
>
> But numbers don't lie, pick up a book from your bookshelf and
> have a look, find a ISBN number with 13 digits (a so-called
> ISBN-13, they start with 978- or 979 which is the GS1 prefix),
> and tell me, what is the number immediately following the
> GS1 prefix - i.e., the 4th number?
>
> Please, just deal with it and go on, this is so embarrassing
> every time it comes up :(
>
> > You've clearly never been to France. :)
>
> I've been to France, I've been to Belgium, I've met French and
> Belgian programmers, French and Belgian students, French and
> Belgian activists [1] (that has nothing to do with computers,
> even), they _all_ speak very good English! Just like you two
> guys do!
>
> > More seriously, a lot of people in China and Japan,
> > including in the software industry, do not speak English.

It would be an opportunity to civilise them.  So that one day, they can do
what the East Germans did.

> Wrong! They do, and they do even more and better for each
> year, and the very small group who don't, well, they have
> a HUGE problem that should be fixed by them putting ALL their
> efforts learning English as soon as possible - it is
> *impossible* to be a tech/science person 2021 and not knowing
> English - luckily, this isn't the case, but if there were more
> people like you translating stuff not even then could you
> ever, ever do it to any extent that would mean a positive to
> those very few who don't know English, it would be a NEGATIVE
> since they would only have access to a small fraction of the
> material available, and in the worst case they would be
> deluding themselves thinking they are so great, while actually
> living in a bubble 10 000 miles behind everyone else!
>
> Luckily this isn't the case at all - French tech people and
> French people in general have no problem whatsoever mastering
> English, they want to do it, they benefit from it, everyone
> else benefit from it, and most of all, it is the REALITY that
> we have that everyone needs to accept for their own benefit!
>
> Speak French to people on the street all you want - of course
> - but the language of science and technology 2021 is English,
> Anglo-American, and to a large extent American English (writhe
> "color" in source, not "colour", however write that in the UK
> tabloids, by all means). It _is_ English and I don't care who
> had a lousy colonial empire or not...

If you want to function in tho world, you got to learn english.
Otherwise you are on your own.  Good luck with that!

> > Translations would be very useful for them.

Then they should do it.  Or pay someone to do it.

> No, on the contrary, it would be a negative to them.
>
> > And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel
> > confident with English treat the lack of available
> > translations as a significant hurdle, or even a barrier.

This would not solve the problem of doing real work.  Nobody
would care about that piece of software if not written in english.
I wonder how we never got any programming languages not in the
english language.  Because all those people were either living
in the United States or the United Kingdom.  Could be that the
French are still in denial in accepting such fact.  They were the
original developers and authors of computing technology.


> 100% incorrect.
>
> > Your replies in this thread strike me as unusually hostile.
> > Why is it such a big problem that some want to translate the
> > emacs help and manual?

I do not see a problem.  The problem is who would do it !

> Yes, because I've heard this so many times before, all the
> incorrect arguments, and it is bit provoking that it is ALWAYS
> the French who brings this up no matter what e-mail list or
> what tent on G8 in Rostock you are on! Every meeting, start
> with a vote which the French guys insist on (despite speaking
> English), French people propose French as the language (what
> a surprise) and then get voted down 21-4, 14-3, 45-11
> every time.
>
> Why aren't the Russian, German and so on people who are also
> part of huge language and language groups making this "French
> case" you think?
>
> Can it be that they are a bit more modest with respect to
> their own language? Or do they simply understand like everyone
> else what a huge benefit it is to them _and everyone_ with
> a common langauge for science and technology, and they are
> enthusiastic about learning this for their own
> information-input but also the ambition to give their own
> information-output?

Perhaps they cannot stand the fact that their Napoleon got
swept onto his back by the british, and then had to wait for
the british to save them from hitler.

> Which, BTW, is exactly like the French are, so why on Earth
> keep up with this charade?
>
> #@$%&!
>
> PS. ha :)
>
> [1] https://dataswamp.org/~incal/blog/index.html
>
> --
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
>
>
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[tomas]

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On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 10:28:16AM +0200, Christopher Dimech wrote:

[...]

> > > More seriously, a lot of people in China and Japan,
> > > including in the software industry, do not speak English.
> 
> It would be an opportunity to civilise them.  So that one day, they can do
> what the East Germans did.

I'd hope that to be ironic. Or is it xenophobic crap?

> If you want to function in tho world, you got to learn english.
> Otherwise you are on your own.  Good luck with that!

Such a load of nonsense. 

 - t

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Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 8:39 PM
> From: tomas@tuxteam.de
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 10:28:16AM +0200, Christopher Dimech wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > > > More seriously, a lot of people in China and Japan,
> > > > including in the software industry, do not speak English.
> >
> > It would be an opportunity to civilise them.  So that one day, they can do
> > what the East Germans did.
>
> I'd hope that to be ironic. Or is it xenophobic crap?

People in Hong Kong and Taiwan would have something to say about that.
China has been doing things in a brutal manner.  As they get out of
poverty, they will rebel and trash communism.

> > If you want to function in tho world, you got to learn english.
> > Otherwise you are on your own.  Good luck with that!
>
> Such a load of nonsense.

If you want to really see truly fantastic children with great aspirations
anywhere, you must see those that have a mastery of the english language.
Particularly if the focus is to grow the human body and the human brain
to its full potential, without any intention of what they will become.



>  - t
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> If you want to really see truly fantastic children with
> great aspirations anywhere, you must see those that have
> a mastery of the english language.

Well, let's not hit the biggest drum perhaps, but _yes_,
that's correct. It is breathtaking to behold actually, the
next generation, and the one after that... so much talent and
confidence everywhere :O

I personally always thought the old-schoolers were cooler but
maybe that was just my personality, watching some of the kids
and youngsters today, it feels like there is no limit to what
they can do, the sky is the limit, if any, and they know it
(many of them) ...

Pretty soon everyone that excels ever so slightly in almost
any field, including fields we don't know about today because
they are still embryonic or doesn't even exist yet, these
people will have the English language as just another ace in
their coat arm, and they won't even think about it or ever
hesitate to use it in any from, spoken, written, it will just
be there and taken for granted and instead they will focus on
doing amazing things where English will be just one of their
many assets...

These people will come from all over the world.
The traditionally rich countries have a head start, a little
edge if you will, maybe that will be so for the foreseeable
future but again, there is so much talent everywhere whoever
relies on that edge alone is "ute i ogjort väder" :)

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 10:52 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Christopher Dimech wrote:
> 
> > If you want to really see truly fantastic children with
> > great aspirations anywhere, you must see those that have
> > a mastery of the english language.
> 
> Well, let's not hit the biggest drum perhaps, but _yes_,
> that's correct. It is breathtaking to behold actually, the
> next generation, and the one after that... so much talent and
> confidence everywhere :O
> 
> I personally always thought the old-schoolers were cooler but
> maybe that was just my personality, watching some of the kids
> and youngsters today, it feels like there is no limit to what
> they can do, the sky is the limit, if any, and they know it
> (many of them) ...

It is my hope and my blessing that they would do much better things 
than we would do.
 
> Pretty soon everyone that excels ever so slightly in almost
> any field, including fields we don't know about today because
> they are still embryonic or doesn't even exist yet, these
> people will have the English language as just another ace in
> their coat arm, and they won't even think about it or ever
> hesitate to use it in any from, spoken, written, it will just
> be there and taken for granted and instead they will focus on
> doing amazing things where English will be just one of their
> many assets...
> 
> These people will come from all over the world.
> The traditionally rich countries have a head start, a little
> edge if you will, maybe that will be so for the foreseeable
> future but again, there is so much talent everywhere whoever
> relies on that edge alone is "ute i ogjort väder" :)

What has to happen is to liberate publishing.  To get all published
works on their computer and do searches with artificial intelligence.

But governments don't want that.  Governments only want research organisations
approved by them to extract information from data mining algorithms.
Of course the restrictions would not apply to them, as we are currently
being enlightened by the recent revelations of the Pegasus Project.  

Citizens all across the world must unite to end corporate and state surveillance,
whilst bringing data mining capabilities possible for citizens.

 
> -- 
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
> 
> 
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean Louis]

* Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> [2021-07-21 11:29]:
> > > And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel
> > > confident with English treat the lack of available
> > > translations as a significant hurdle, or even a barrier.
> 
> This would not solve the problem of doing real work.  Nobody
> would care about that piece of software if not written in english.

To contrary I think many would have benefits with software written in
their language.

> I wonder how we never got any programming languages not in the
> english language.

Here are some references in the list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages

>  Because all those people were either living in the United States or
> the United Kingdom.

Because the computer science is based in English countries.

> Could be that the French are still in denial in accepting such fact.
> They were the original developers and authors of computing
> technology.

French based programming languages are: Logo, RoboMind, Catrobat,
AppleScript, ALGOL 68, GOTO++, Linotte, LSE, BASICOIS, SPIP, 4th
Dimension, so that is all from the above reference.

I find the idea of translating programming language very
important. 

And not that I find it hard to implement:

- I would use any programming language as the starting language;

- Any description defined would be defined in chunks so that automated
  programming works better. For example names of variables would not
  be names, rathre pointers to ID of the variable which then has
  entries for each programming language; same for functions and other
  objects;

- Then one would generate the language in the starting language;

- If translated it would be generated in the other language.

- I would demand more literate function naming;

Translation would speed up computer level knowledge in many other countries.


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Jean Louis wrote:

> French based programming languages are: Logo, RoboMind,
> Catrobat, AppleScript, ALGOL 68, GOTO++, Linotte, LSE,
> BASICOIS, SPIP, 4th Dimension, so that is all from the
> above reference.

Sorry, I disagree 100% with everything in your post but yes,
for the record no one is making the case the French didn't
contribute to the computer world, on the contrary as you show
(cool) but that isn't the issue, well, it hasn't been so far
anyway, I've been speaking of the computer world langauge
only, which happens to be ... not French. And it doesn't
matter what they did or didn't do, sorry.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Thibaut Verron]

On 21/07/2021 15:23, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text 
editor wrote:
> Jean Louis wrote:
>
>> French based programming languages are: Logo, RoboMind,
>> Catrobat, AppleScript, ALGOL 68, GOTO++, Linotte, LSE,
>> BASICOIS, SPIP, 4th Dimension, so that is all from the
>> above reference.
> Sorry, I disagree 100% with everything in your post but yes,
> for the record no one is making the case the French didn't
> contribute to the computer world, on the contrary as you show
> (cool) but that isn't the issue, well, it hasn't been so far
> anyway, I've been speaking of the computer world langauge
> only, which happens to be ... not French. And it doesn't
> matter what they did or didn't do, sorry.
>
You misread what Jean said. This is not a list of programming languages 
coming from France, it is a list of languages where some or all the 
keywords are in French, by default or optionally.

I personally don't support translating programming languages. I had too 
many unpleasant experiences with Excel/Libreoffice (I don't remember 
which one was translating the functions to French, but not both, and it 
was very confusing).

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Thibaut Verron wrote:

> You misread what Jean said. This is not a list of
> programming languages coming from France, it is a list of
> languages where some or all the keywords are in French, by
> default or optionally.

Yeah, I didn't recognize even most of them I think, but there
are languages from France, Prolog, right?

   Prolog 1972 France, Alain Colmerauer, logic/AI programming

that is the only hit for "France" in my HIST file:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/COMP-HIST
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/bot/scripts/hist
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#bot

What about Pascal? Nope, Switzerland

  Pascal      1970 Niklaus Wirth. Switzerland

"Pascal Sol" is French, don't know what that is tho...

  Pascal Sol was designed around 1983 by a French team to
  implement a Unix-like system named Sol. It was standard
  Pascal level-1 ... The Sol team later on moved to the
  ChorusOS project to design a distributed operating system."
  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)>

Doesn't sound like they had a lot of success tho, see?
Should have named it after the great US space-geometry
mathematician Yogi Berra instead...

But I haven't systematically added "nationality" in the HIST
file so maybe some more French connections there, check it
out, if you'd like...

Here is some Prolog from a person (me) who didn't understood
it, but understood it enough not to like it, well, not for
that project anyway:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/terror-2/
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#terror

Prolog, CS Sudoku-solver logic-programming thing, right?
Too much science for me anyway... But I'm sure it's good.
I BTW had a friend who made an interface from Prolog to some
database, that to my astonishment when I heard of it didn't
exist at that point, so that was a cool thing he did, on the
BSc level even! I wish I could CC him this one decade after he
probably completed it...

> I personally don't support translating programming languages.
> I had too many unpleasant experiences with Excel/Libreoffice
> (I don't remember which one was translating the functions to
> French, but not both, and it was very confusing).

ikr? 100%

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Thibaut Verron]

On 21/07/2021 16:05, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text 
editor wrote:
> Thibaut Verron wrote:
>
>> You misread what Jean said. This is not a list of
>> programming languages coming from France, it is a list of
>> languages where some or all the keywords are in French, by
>> default or optionally.
> Yeah, I didn't recognize even most of them I think, but there
> are languages from France, Prolog, right?
>
>     Prolog 1972 France, Alain Colmerauer, logic/AI programming
>
> that is the only hit for "France" in my HIST file:
>
>    https://dataswamp.org/~incal/COMP-HIST
>    https://dataswamp.org/~incal/bot/scripts/hist
>    https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#bot

Caml, OCaml, and Scilab come to mind.

None of those are in French language so they didn't appear on Jean's list.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Thibaut Verron wrote:

> Caml, OCaml, and Scilab come to mind

Thanks, now the list is

  4th Dimension
  ALGOL 68
  AppleScript
  BASICOIS
  Caml
  Catrobat
  GOTO++
  Linotte
  Logo
  LSE
  OCaml
  RoboMind
  Scilab
  SPIP

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Thibaut Verron]

Le mer. 21 juil. 2021 à 20:00, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU
Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> a écrit :
>
> Thibaut Verron wrote:
>
> > Caml, OCaml, and Scilab come to mind
>
> Thanks, now the list is
>
>   4th Dimension
>   ALGOL 68
>   AppleScript
>   BASICOIS
>   Caml
>   Catrobat
>   GOTO++
>   Linotte
>   Logo
>   LSE
>   OCaml
>   RoboMind
>   Scilab
>   SPIP

What list is that exactly? I've told you twice already that what Jean
gave you is a list of languages supporting a French-language syntax.
This is NOT a list of made-in-France languages.

Heck, it has Applescript in it! Since when is Apple French?

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Thibaut Verron wrote:

> What list is that exactly? I've told you twice already that
> what Jean gave you is a list of languages supporting
> a French-language syntax. This is NOT a list of
> made-in-France languages.

Don't worry, I'll check every item individually on the English
Wikipedia, primarily to be able to give a meaningful and
correct summary, but that happens to include ensuring that no
programming language will be incorrectly attributed to the
French-language sphere of techno-science practitioners.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2021 at 6:15 AM
> From: "Thibaut Verron" <thibaut.verron@gmail.com>
> To: "Emanuel Berg" <moasenwood@zoho.eu>, "help-gnu-emacs" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Le mer. 21 juil. 2021 à 20:00, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU
> Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> a écrit :
> >
> > Thibaut Verron wrote:
> >
> > > Caml, OCaml, and Scilab come to mind
> >
> > Thanks, now the list is
> >
> >   4th Dimension
> >   ALGOL 68
> >   AppleScript
> >   BASICOIS
> >   Caml
> >   Catrobat
> >   GOTO++
> >   Linotte
> >   Logo
> >   LSE
> >   OCaml
> >   RoboMind
> >   Scilab
> >   SPIP
> 
> What list is that exactly? I've told you twice already that what Jean
> gave you is a list of languages supporting a French-language syntax.
> This is NOT a list of made-in-France languages.

I can see reasons why learning to read mathematical works in French will be 
a better investment than in the other languages (assuming you already know 
English, of course).  

There is still a significant, though diminishing, proportion of papers, textbooks,
and research books which are written in French.   The proportion is about 1-2%.  
The production of research in any other language than English and French has essentially
come to a halt.
 
> Heck, it has Applescript in it! Since when is Apple French?
> 
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> There is still a significant, though diminishing, proportion
> of papers, textbooks, and research books which are written
> in French. The proportion is about 1-2%. The production of
> research in any other language than English and French has
> essentially come to a halt.

ikr?

These algorithms from the paleo-scientific era of computing
are discontinued.

But: Can you verify these digits (1-2%, ->0) and/or give us
references, please?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

>> There is still a significant, though diminishing,
>> proportion of papers, textbooks, and research books which
>> are written in French. The proportion is about 1-2%.
>> The production of research in any other language than
>> English and French has essentially come to a halt.
>
> ikr?
>
> These algorithms from the paleo-scientific era of computing
> are discontinued.
>
> But: Can you verify these digits (1-2%, ->0) and/or give us
> references, please?

> ikr?
>
> These algorithms from the paleo-scientific era of computing
> are discontinued.
>
> But: Can you verify these digits (1-2%, ->0) and/or give us
> references, please?

Now we are getting somewhere, let's see, here where I live we
have three specifically computer-related educations on the
university level, namely

  * Computer Science
  (in theory the most theoretic but in practice the most
   practical one; master programs are (1) HCI, (2) CS which is
   more theory, perhaps for real this time [as in computations
   on real time models, indeed], and (3) embedded systems
   which is the coolest and most difficult one IMO because of
   the practical component and addition to theory, HCI should
   be the easiest altho nothing is "easy" on this level)

  * Information Technology Engineers
  (this is very close to CS actually and is as difficult and
   time-consuming, it has more math than CS and also a couple
   of random society-oriented courses, other than that they
   are virtually the same I'd say, and this also show in the
   big overlap with respect to courses and students; I always
   considered the IT guys as good as us and having virtually
   the same inclinations and comintment to "the cause")

  * Information Systems
  (this is something different, no overlap at all in courses
   or students with the CS and IT guys; I'd describe it as
   burocratic and administrative support systems for
   business - it is by far the least in-depth tech.
   this education isn't easy but not difficult, students who
   work moderately hard deal with it with no problems)

Can we get the stats - BSc, MSc, and PhD - what language? -
can we get the stats for these three internationally somehow?
to be able to compare and settle this for good with
hard facts?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

> The production of research in any other language than English and
> French has essentially come to a halt.

That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in, yes.
But I think China would beg to differ.


        Stefan

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2021 at 7:40 AM
> From: "Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> > The production of research in any other language than English and
> > French has essentially come to a halt.
>
> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in, yes.
> But I think China would beg to differ.
>
>         Stefan

China's opinion is irrelevant and full of shit.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences approved the construction of a Bio-Security Level
4 laboratory in Wuhan in 2003, only because it was designed and constructed with
French assistance as part of a 2004 cooperative agreement.  China lacks experience.

Academic corruption is rampant in China with the prevalence of fraud, plagiarism
and fabricated research in academic publishing.  It is the nation with the most
retracted papers and fake peer-review as from 2010.

With more than 50% of all articles retracted by scientific journals worldwide for
articles submitted by Chinese authors.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

>> > The production of research in any other language than English and
>> > French has essentially come to a halt.
>> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in, yes.
>> But I think China would beg to differ.
> China's opinion is irrelevant and full of shit.

Your prejudice doesn't change the fact that a significant (and arguably
an increasing) amount of research is done in chinese.


        Stefan

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:

>> China's opinion is irrelevant and full of shit.
>
> Your prejudice doesn't change the fact that a significant
> (and arguably an increasing) amount of research is done
> in chinese.

I believe you, but how do you know that?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor [2021-07-21 23:58:31] wrote:
> Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:
>>> China's opinion is irrelevant and full of shit.
>> Your prejudice doesn't change the fact that a significant
>> (and arguably an increasing) amount of research is done
>> in Chinese.
> I believe you, but how do you know that?

Only occasional anectodal "evidence", sorry.

But for example https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01076-x
refers to a major increase in funding in China, and while AFAIK top
research from China still aims to publish in English venues (which are
still more prestigious and give more exposure), I expect a large
fraction of that research is only published in Chinese (after all, the
Chinese speaking audience is already fairly large ;-)


        Stefan


PS: While the above talks about science in general, my own experience is
limited to computer science, where English is arguably even more
entrenched than in other fields.

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

Nature is a predatory journal.

How many chinese language articles have you read?  What really important information
do they contain, and how are they crucial to read?  When a similar thing was done
in russia, almost everything has by now been forgotten.

> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2021 at 10:55 AM
> From: "Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor [2021-07-21 23:58:31] wrote:
> > Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:
> >>> China's opinion is irrelevant and full of shit.
> >> Your prejudice doesn't change the fact that a significant
> >> (and arguably an increasing) amount of research is done
> >> in Chinese.
> > I believe you, but how do you know that?
>
> Only occasional anectodal "evidence", sorry.
>
> But for example https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01076-x
> refers to a major increase in funding in China, and while AFAIK top
> research from China still aims to publish in English venues (which are
> still more prestigious and give more exposure), I expect a large
> fraction of that research is only published in Chinese (after all, the
> Chinese speaking audience is already fairly large ;-)
>
>
>         Stefan
>
>
> PS: While the above talks about science in general, my own experience is
> limited to computer science, where English is arguably even more
> entrenched than in other fields.
>
>
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> How many chinese language articles have you read?
> What really important information do they contain, and how
> are they crucial to read?

Don't the citation system determine this for us?

What's the most quoted paper in Computer Science?

That's the best one by definition, if these are the rules.

Indeed, were are the rules anyone, and where are the stats?

Because then everyone could just look at the stats and decide
for themselves in 1 second?

> When a similar thing was done in russia, almost everything
> has by now been forgotten.

Heh, check out the URL below for Putin's fake thesis. In the
book, which is anti-Putin BTW, it says Putin was that much of
a stand-up guy after becoming president, he never claimed to
have or mentioned that "degree" of his to anyone :)

%% Maria Alexandrovna Gessen
%% Putin's purchased thesis: https://www.rferl.org/a/1067113.html
@book{mannen-utan-ansikte,
  author     = {Masha Gessen},
  isbn       = {978-91-7337-484-2},
  preface    = {Stig Fredrikson},
  pages      = {436},
  publisher  = {Bromberg},
  title      = {Mannen utan ansikte (The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin)},
  translator = {Nille Lindgren},
  year       = {2013 (2012)}
}

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[tomas]

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On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 10:11:22AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:
[...]
emacs-tangents, please. Pretty please.

 - t

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Re: Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

----- Christopher Dimech
Administrator General - Naiad Informatics - Gnu Project

Society has become too quick to pass judgement and declare someone
Persona Non-Grata, the most extreme form of censure a country can
bestow.

In a new era of destructive authoritarianism, I support Richard
Stallman.  Times of great crisis are also times of great
opportunity.  I call upon you to make this struggle yours as well !

https://stallmansupport.org/
https://www.fsf.org/     https://www.gnu.org/


> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2021 at 8:11 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Christopher Dimech wrote:
>
> > How many chinese language articles have you read?
> > What really important information do they contain, and how
> > are they crucial to read?
>
> Don't the citation system determine this for us?
>
> What's the most quoted paper in Computer Science?

It is the highly influential paper of how products can be made cheap,
and with the highest profit margins.  Which the Chinese Manufacturing
Companies do by outsourcing in Africa.  Welcome to the New Slave Trade.

> That's the best one by definition, if these are the rules.
>
> Indeed, were are the rules anyone, and where are the stats?
>
> Because then everyone could just look at the stats and decide
> for themselves in 1 second?
>
> > When a similar thing was done in russia, almost everything
> > has by now been forgotten.
>
> Heh, check out the URL below for Putin's fake thesis. In the
> book, which is anti-Putin BTW, it says Putin was that much of
> a stand-up guy after becoming president, he never claimed to
> have or mentioned that "degree" of his to anyone :)
>
> %% Maria Alexandrovna Gessen
> %% Putin's purchased thesis: https://www.rferl.org/a/1067113.html
> @book{mannen-utan-ansikte,
>   author     = {Masha Gessen},
>   isbn       = {978-91-7337-484-2},
>   preface    = {Stig Fredrikson},
>   pages      = {436},
>   publisher  = {Bromberg},
>   title      = {Mannen utan ansikte (The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin)},
>   translator = {Nille Lindgren},
>   year       = {2013 (2012)}
> }
>
> --
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
>
>
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 17:44:46 -0400
> From:  Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> 
> >> > The production of research in any other language than English and
> >> > French has essentially come to a halt.
> >> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in, yes.
> >> But I think China would beg to differ.
> > China's opinion is irrelevant and full of shit.
> 
> Your prejudice doesn't change the fact that a significant (and arguably
> an increasing) amount of research is done in chinese.

This tangent should either stop or be taken to emacs-tangents.

I urger everyone to please stop posting about this stuff here.

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2021 at 9:44 AM
> From: "Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> >> > The production of research in any other language than English and
> >> > French has essentially come to a halt.
> >> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in, yes.
> >> But I think China would beg to differ.
> > China's opinion is irrelevant and full of shit.
>
> Your prejudice doesn't change the fact that a significant (and arguably
> an increasing) amount of research is done in chinese.

To get really back on topic, nobody started to work on multilingualisation
seriously.  I support the idea of a multilingualisation framework, but a focus
on particular languages such as chinese is misguided.

Peaple conversant in particular language can then have the capability
of doing that specific work.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:

>> The production of research in any other language than
>> English and French has essentially come to a halt.
>
> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in,
> yes. But I think China would beg to differ.

Is it possible to get hard facts, as in digits somewhere?

For the FOSS world: mailing list traffic (either in K or
perhaps more easily in the number of posts) in the devel and
user/help lists for a set of iconic software, e.g., CL,
Debian, Emacs, irssi, Linux, rsync, ssh, tmux, X, xterm,
and zsh?

How many posts are in the general (English) lists and how many
posts in other language-specific lists, dealing with the same
software, e.g. the corresponding French list, if available?

And for the university world: say math, CS, IT, Information
systems, and Engineering physics? How many BSc, MSc, and PhD
papers are in English and how many in other languages, e.g.
how many are in French?

And yes data for China as well would be nice. The more the
merrier...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[tomas]

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On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 11:57:40PM +0200, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:
> Stefan Monnier via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:
> 
> >> The production of research in any other language than
> >> English and French has essentially come to a halt.
> >
> > That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in,
> > yes. But I think China would beg to differ.
> 
> Is it possible to get hard facts, as in digits somewhere?

emacs-tangents, please.

 - t

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Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

tomas wrote:

>>>> The production of research in any other language than
>>>> English and French has essentially come to a halt.
>>>
>>> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in,
>>> yes. But I think China would beg to differ.
>> 
>> Is it possible to get hard facts, as in digits somewhere?
>
> emacs-tangents, please.

The Computer Science university and research world is relevant
to Emacs, and we want to be relevant there with our software.

And stats and facts make discussions more on-topic, not less,
don't you think?

Then all the ranting could be replaced by, "Mes braves, take
a look at the stats, think, and decide for yourself."

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[lisa-asket]

From: Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
Date: 22/07/2021 10:17:14 Europe/Paris

tomas wrote:

>>>> The production of research in any other language than
>>>> English and French has essentially come to a halt.
>>>
>>> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in,
>>> yes. But I think China would beg to differ.
>> 
>> Is it possible to get hard facts, as in digits somewhere?
>
> emacs-tangents, please.

>The Computer Science university and research world is relevant
>to Emacs, and we want to be relevant there with our software.



The argument is to convince us to write in Chinese so we can be relevant ?

If they want they can do that themselves ! 

RE: [External] : Re: Emacs i18n

[Drew Adams]

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> > The production of research in any other language than English and
> > French has essentially come to a halt.
> 
> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in, yes.
> But I think China would beg to differ.

+1

And no need to beg.

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Re: [External] : Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Drew Adams wrote:

>>> The production of research in any other language than
>>> English and French has essentially come to a halt.
>> 
>> That's what it looks like from the (big) bubble we're in,
>> yes. But I think China would beg to differ.
>
> +1
>
> And no need to beg.

What is "research" here, the PhD level?

There are only three languages active on that level, English,
French, and Chinese?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: [External] : Re: Emacs i18n

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 145 bytes --]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2021 at 06:08:49AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:

[...]

emacs-tangents, please.

 - t

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Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Jean Louis wrote:

> French based programming languages are: Logo, RoboMind,
> Catrobat, AppleScript, ALGOL 68, GOTO++, Linotte, LSE,
> BASICOIS, SPIP, 4th Dimension, so that is all from the
> above reference.

"French-based", uhm, what does that mean? ALGOL 68 seems to be
a Swiss/Dutch thing?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL>

Switzerland, is that what you mean? In Belgium they speak
French in the capital which is more international I guess, but
I heard the administration does everything double! And also in
the southern part (~half) around Liège which has dominated
politically historically, or am I wrong? But the Dutch guys,
what do they speak? Dutch? Which is close to German,
absolutely not French? But they speak French in Switzerland
(among other languages) so that what you mean?

Anyway big thanks for that list Jean, looks very exotic!
I only know (have heard of) Logo and ALGOL. I'll add them to
the HIST file sometime soon, God willing! Keep 'em coming,
French or not...

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/COMP-HIST
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/bot/scripts/hist
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#bot

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2021 at 12:56 AM
> From: "Jean Louis" <bugs@gnu.support>
> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, moasenwood@zoho.eu
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> * Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> [2021-07-21 11:29]:
> > > > And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel
> > > > confident with English treat the lack of available
> > > > translations as a significant hurdle, or even a barrier.
> >
> > This would not solve the problem of doing real work.  Nobody
> > would care about that piece of software if not written in english.
>
> To contrary I think many would have benefits with software written in
> their language.
>
> > I wonder how we never got any programming languages not in the
> > english language.
>
> Here are some references in the list:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages
>
> >  Because all those people were either living in the United States or
> > the United Kingdom.
>
> Because the computer science is based in English countries.
>
> > Could be that the French are still in denial in accepting such fact.
> > They were the original developers and authors of computing
> > technology.
>
> French based programming languages are: Logo, RoboMind, Catrobat,
> AppleScript, ALGOL 68, GOTO++, Linotte, LSE, BASICOIS, SPIP, 4th
> Dimension, so that is all from the above reference.
>
> I find the idea of translating programming language very
> important.

It is the same problem of translating english publications to other languages.
Rarely happens.  Although the best works almost always get translated, because
there exists a market for them.

The Adventures of Pinocchio is best :)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Andersen's Fairy Tales
El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
The Adventures of Asterix
The Adventures of Tintin
Harry Potter
Bhagavad Gita
The Diary of a Young Girl
Winnie-the-Pooh
Pippi Longstocking
The Alchemist
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Isha Upanishad


> And not that I find it hard to implement:
>
> - I would use any programming language as the starting language;
>
> - Any description defined would be defined in chunks so that automated
>   programming works better. For example names of variables would not
>   be names, rathre pointers to ID of the variable which then has
>   entries for each programming language; same for functions and other
>   objects;
>
> - Then one would generate the language in the starting language;
>
> - If translated it would be generated in the other language.
>
> - I would demand more literate function naming;
>
> Translation would speed up computer level knowledge in many other countries.
>
>
> --
> Jean
>
> Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
> https://www.fsf.org/campaigns
>
> In support of Richard M. Stallman
> https://stallmansupport.org/
>
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> It is the same problem of translating english publications
> to other languages. Rarely happens. Although the best works
> almost always get translated, because there exists a market
> for them.
>
> The Adventures of Pinocchio is best :)
>
> Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
> Andersen's Fairy Tales
> El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
> The Adventures of Asterix
> The Adventures of Tintin
> Harry Potter
> Bhagavad Gita
> The Diary of a Young Girl
> Winnie-the-Pooh
> Pippi Longstocking
> The Alchemist
> The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
> Nineteen Eighty-Four
> Isha Upanishad

From the Franco-Belgian comic book bande dessinée industry,
craft, and art form:

  Blueberry
  The Incal (not in the list below)
  The Metabarons (*)
  Thorgal
  ... and many others

(*) Here the script author, Alejandro Jodorowsky, is Chilean
    (or Chilean-French they say officially, that's news for
    me, he is more South American than French to the style
    anyway)
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Jodorowsky> and
    the artist, Juan Giménez, is from Argentine, but they
    belong to the French Métal Hurlant sphere nonthesame, and
    Jean Giraud AKA Moebius (of France) drew old-school Incal
    ("L'Incal") where the Metabaron appeared as a character,
    so it is French despite or much thanks to the awesome work
    of Giménez, Giraud, and Jodorowsky.
    
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/books/books.bib

%%%% Thorgal

@book{thorgal,
  author     = {Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski},
  isbn       = {91-7089-710-7},
  publisher  = {Casablanca},
  title      = {Thorgal: Den onde guden},
  year       = {1993 (1987)}
}

@book{thorgals-varld-kriss-3,
  author     = {De Vita and Sente and Dorison and Mariolle and Surzhenko},
  isbn       = {978-91-88897-00-8},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Thorgals värld: Kriss från Valnor 3},
  year       = {2019 (2014-2015)}
}

@book{thorgals-varld-kriss-2,
  author     = {De Vita and Yves Sente},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-74-1},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Thorgals värld: Kriss från Valnor 2: Krigardrottningen},
  year       = {2018}
}

@book{thorgal-5,
  author     = {Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-68-0},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Thorgal 5: Genom tid och rum},
  year       = {2017 (1989-91)}
}

@book{thorgal-3,
  author     = {Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-21-5},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Thorgal 3: Vikingar och gudar},
  year       = {2016 (1988)}
}

@book{thorgal-2,
  author     = {Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-12-3},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Thorgal 2: I fiendens spår},
  year       = {2015}
}

%%%% Metabarons

@book{metabarons-poet-and-killer,
  author     = {Alexandro Jodorowsky and Juan Giménez},
  isbn       = 1930652232,
  publisher  = {Humanoids},
  title      = {Metabarons: Poet and Killer},
  year       = {2002}
}

@book{metabarons-path-of-the-warrior,
  author     = {Alexandro Jodorowsky and Juan Giménez},
  isbn       = {193065247X},
  publisher  = {Humanoids},
  title      = {Metabarons: Path of the Warrior},
  year       = {2002}
}

%%%% Blueberry

@book{blueberry-8,
  author     = {Jean-Michael Charlier and Jean Giraud},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-99-4},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Blueberry 8},
  year       = {2019 (1990-1999)}
}

@book{blueberry-6,
  author     = {Jean-Michael Charlier and Jean Giraud},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-84-0},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Blueberry 6},
  year       = {2018 (1974-1980)}
}

@book{blueberry-5,
  author     = {Jean-Michael Charlier and Jean Giraud},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-67-3},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Blueberry 5},
  year       = {2017}
}

@book{blueberry-4,
  author     = {Jean-Michael Charlier and Jean Giraud},
  isbn       = {978-91-87861-54-3},
  publisher  = {Cobolt},
  title      = {Blueberry 4},
  year       = {2017 (1968-1970)}
}

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le lundi 19 juillet 2021, 03:51:08 CEST Emanuel Berg via Users list for 
the GNU Emacs text editor a écrit :
> Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> > Doing the UI only is not useful. The UI and the help would
> > be tremendously useful.
> 
> Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.

Nobody told in this thread French had any world dominance.  Although you 
may note that the concern about english is often raised by french people, 
and maybe for some sort of inconscious nationalism or rempent national 
aversion toward english due to that previous context, the concern stays 
valid, and you cannot cancel an argument validity due to the people who 
raise it.

> There is no miniature world of computers where
> everyone speaks French or any other language who badly needs
> translations, drop it.

There is, not only in france, but any non-germanic place I have been 
through.  English, just like french, is a difficult language, with lot of 
vocabulary.  You’re living is a small-world utopia that’s nowhere near 
even realistic.

Even those who *fluently* speak english are commonly *tired* with it.  Even 
I, and actually anybody because that’s natural, would choose to read 
something in their native(s) language(s) rather than a foreign one, and 
doing that would imply less effort, energy spent, hence more reading and 
work done than if done through english.

Just to be sure, you’re a native speaker of english right? so how could 
you even *know* that? or have you tried to work in mandarin on the ground 
that its syntax is said to be simple and flexionless, to say it’s as easy 
as in your native language? otherwise, do you have studies showing the 
opposite? since you’re not the one bringing the argument, the burden of 
proof should fall on us, and currently I’m being lazy at it, but if anyone 
brings such studies (which shouldn’t be any more difficult to find than any 
study, but I’m bad at searching) I doubt you would have anything to oppose 
to that u.u

There are everywhere teachings of CS in english *as a special matter*, 
that’s a way to *train* for english because that training is *needed* 
because it is nonnatural, and it is a difficulty and people try lowering it 
by confronting to it… yet most of courses are in the national language, 
not english.  Some vocabulary obviously comes from english, and 
englishisms are present more often than not, but the grammar, phonology, 
orthography, syntax, and most of vocabulary we use stay our national (or 
even sometimes, with luck (that means not in france) the local one) 
language.

It is up to the point I’ve personally observed that something translated 
is perceived as more “user-friendly” than something graphical, variable-
spaced and colored, up to the point that this common cliché of white 
monospace text on black background with no graphics, no mouse and none 
input but keyboard, that scares many outsiders, newcomers, etc., stays 
less deterring than an all english interface.  In this respect emacs still 
performs badly, and I can’t recommend it to many people I know, especially 
non-programmers, because of that (and it would be sad for you to take as 
argument “emacs is only for programmers and CS-ists”).

That would be the kind of “user-friendliness”, btw, that may have an 
effective impact on making more women or minorities join CS, and moreover 
less occidental, as that concern has come more into fashion recently.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Alexandre Garreau wrote:

>> Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.
>
> Nobody told in this thread French had any world dominance.
> Although you may note that the concern about english is
> often raised by french people

They are the ONLY people who EVER brings this up.

> and maybe for some sort of inconscious nationalism or
> rempent national aversion toward english due to that
> previous context, the concern stays valid, and you cannot
> cancel an argument validity due to the people who raise it.

We WANT the French-speaking people, and they are here already
as we clearly see, but this isn't the 70s anymore where there
were one "expert" on the same subject in every god damned
country who had read a couple of 12 books on the subject and
wrote a nice summary on in, resembling pretty much exactly
what some other dude did in some other country reading his 12
books! The langauge of science and technology IS English, it
if had been French I would have written the same thing, only
in defense of French - but it _isn't_ French, and everyone
understands that - even the French, as we clearly see - but
unlike everyone else, the French pretends or do not accept
this in some places of their minds, so they bring this up over
and over, #$&%@!

>> There is no miniature world of computers where everyone
>> speaks French or any other language who badly needs
>> translations, drop it.
>
> There is

THERE IS NOT, and whatever fraction there is is getting
smaller by the day, it isn't a place were you yourself would
like to be restricted to, so why ever would you like that for
your compatriots that are, BTW, fully capable of learning
English just like everyone else? In fact, the French language
is much closer to English than a lot of other languages, there
is no disadvantage at all in any sense or in anyway, and we
see this every day when we speak English to people from the
French-speaking world!

> not only in france, but any non-germanic place I have been
> through. English, just like french, is a difficult language

No, because of popular culture, technology, and proximity of
languages it is very easy for anyone these days to learn
English, if the have any ambitions whatsoever with science and
technology they already know English before they even enter
the university?

> with lot of vocabulary. You’re living is a small-world
> utopia that’s nowhere near even realistic.

We live in the same world of science and technology where the
language is English, maybe it made sense in the 70-80s to
translate the man pages or whatever (the French were the only
ones who got close BTW, that said French programmers today are
typically _not_ using that old, incomplete, un-updated stuff
were you have to wonder - even if it was perfect, which it is
not and cannot be, so no disrespect to the translators - even it
if was perfect they'd still have to wonder about what
everything is, what is interface, hash algorithm, API, proxy, client-server,
raster, shading langauge, checksum, compression with the use
of tagged chunks, Alice and Bob in French? why aren't the
English-language software options congruent with ... wait,
what terms are we using, even? The French or the English?
(Oh, I know Alice and Bob - Abelard et Héloïse, n'est-ce pas?)

> Even those who *fluently* speak english are commonly *tired*
> with it.

No, that is true only in the initial, beginner phase, then on
the contrary one gets tired of reading it in a language that
is _foreign_ to it, the _native_ language is always the best
and the native language in the science and technology world is
English, US English in particular.

> Even I, and actually anybody because that’s natural, would
> choose to read something in their native(s) language(s)
> rather than a foreign one

English isn't foreign here, it is the native language of
the field.

> Just to be sure, you’re a native speaker of english right?

Hahaha :) Are you kidding, I'm Swedish! That said, these
rantings are to be put on my account solely, I'm sure many of
my countrymen who reads this thinks I'm insane or something...
ha :)

> or have you tried to work in mandarin

This instant, in another buffer I have a friend on IRC from
ROC and he speaks better English than me (he thinks that at
least :)) and I was a CS student when Sweden offered courses
free of charge (now they do that only to EU contrives) so every
course, taught in English, was like 50% people from China!
I lived in a student house for 7 years with a configuration of
Chinese people ALWAYS present at one time or the other,
EVERYONE spoke English, all the books were in English, exams
were in English, the Chinese guys were sometimes a weird bunch
to deal with on an everyday basis but the problem was _never_
their or mine or anyone else's (certainly not the French who
were also there, but in much smaller numbers) NO ONE had any
problem whatsoever with the English, trust me!

> on the ground that its syntax is said to be simple and
> flexionless, to say it’s as easy as in your native language?

I'm not saying I or anyone else is as good with English as we
are with our own languages, except for when speaking of one
thing - technology. The language is of course not perfect, how
could it ever be, but it is "good enough for government work",
good enough for the intended purpose. (I don't think my
English as in English in general is that good actually, maybe
my ROC friend is right.)

> otherwise, do you have studies showing the opposite?

We don't need studies, we have something stronger, reality.

> There are everywhere teachings of CS in english *as
> a special matter*, that’s a way to *train* for english
> because that training is *needed* because it is nonnatural,
> and it is a difficulty and people try lowering it by
> confronting to it... yet most of courses are in the national
> language, not english.

Not here. But that's OK, I'm not saying all universities that
teach technology must necessarily do everything in English
this very instant. But that's were we are heading anyway.
In the 70s everyone wrote their PhDs in their own languages.
Now people even write their BSc in English. There will only be
more and more of this and that's a good thing. Those who don't
will be at a disadvantage. Those who do not know _any_ English
will be at such a disadvantage they won't be able to
contribute or acquire information in a way that make them even
belong, sorry.

> Some vocabulary obviously comes from english, and
> englishisms are present more often than not, but the
> grammar, phonology, orthography, syntax, and most of
> vocabulary we use stay our national (or even sometimes, with
> luck (that means not in france) the local one) language.

Yes, of course, but it isn't about that, it is about English
as a tool to communicate about technology, it isn't about the
beauty of the language, I'm sure some of the things I write
would make a Grammar School teacher blush, but that's OK, it
is at this point unavoidable and perhaps that will always be
like that, even, but even now and long before I write this
people have collaborated on zillion projects speaking English -
and French and Russian also, and Swedish even - only these
languages didn't make it to the #1 position that English has,
right here and right now - so instead of translating, if you
want to help "your" people (not necessary IMO, but OK) what
you should do is became English _teachers_, not translators,
and teach the very, very rare technology GENIUS who can do
EVERYTHING with a keyboard but cannot speak or write a word
of English - I don't believe these people exist in their
miniature worlds consisting of themselves and equally
language-blind friends hacking the Pentagon and Fort Knox - but
if you find them, YES, do us all a favor and tech them English
so we all can be helped by their marvelous work, and maybe
help them a bit as well hehe :)

> emacs is only for programmers and CS-ists

Yes, but it is much, much broader than that, you don't have to
be a programmer, it is enough to have a smartphone and
smart-TV and god damn computer, this has already contributed
A LOT to how people speak English, Germans at 20 for example
speak much better English than I did, when I was 20 (and then
I thought Germans couldn't speak English at all, maybe), so
NO, it is not necessary for you to be an Emacs user or
programmer, everyone that uses technology is benefited
tremendously for knowing English and it works both ways,
technology makes you better at English (ordinary English,
between humans) as well, because English is not the langauge
of just nations like the US, England <3, Australia <3 and so
on, it is also the language of TECHNOLOGY, so make people
COME, don't work on things that will make them NOT COME @%&#$!

> That would be the kind of "user-friendliness", btw, that may
> have an effective impact on making more women or minorities
> join CS, and moreover less occidental, as that concern has
> come more into fashion recently.

Women are already almost 100% binary and they are better at
communicating than men some would say so they would have no
problem because of the English language to join the tech world
and if we take a look on reality this has been the case for as
long as I don't know.

As for minorities that have historically had a position of
disadvantage the more technology and the more English to them
the better!

PS. ha :) stop it...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

> but this isn't the 70s anymore where there were one "expert"
> on the same subject in every god damned country who had read
> a couple of 12 books on the subject and wrote a nice summary
> on in, resembling pretty much exactly what some other dude
> did in some other country reading his 12 books

Oh, I shouldn't have said that, or not in that way at least,
for the record, just because there was this tendency here and
there and that was possible because of the general situation
that doesn't mean everyone or even the majority were like
this, there were of course very good researchers and
scientists in the 70s, some who wrote great stuff in their
native languages and some who knew like 5 languages and wrote
in several languages as well.

Apologies if anyone took that the wrong way...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Thibaut Verron wrote:

>> They used to speak French, now they speak English.
>>
>
> I don't know what they used to speak, but nowadays they
> speak their own language afaik.

They used to speak French, that was the langauge of diplomacy,
now they speak English.

> We see the effect of this when all EU treaties are
> translated in all the official languages of the EU (which,
> luckily, still include English).

Well, they have resources to do that, and hire themselves and
each other to do the job for the right price. A lot is for
political reasons, also. But, obviously I don't know how
everything happens there, but of course the international
language is English there as well as everywhere else.

>> We see traces of this in for example the Euro Vision Song
>> Contest where they tell the score in English and French.
>
> Is that diplomacy now? :)

I think it is! It is a competition between nation and about
national pride. But it is also just a show, of course.
Commercial, monetary. Just like IIHF, too bad the French
didn't have a team this year (they play the B tournament, with
a bunch of Canadian guys, I think, so hopefully we see them
again soon).

FYI I've played ice hockey with Canadian guys from Quebec -
you know of course that they were separatists in the 70s - now
(well, this was 5-10 years ago) now these guys spoke English
in a way that was inseparable from any US or English-speaking
Canadian dude, no French accent, nothing. Reality, "man".

> Okay my bad. Might I still assume that I have met more
> French scientists and programmers than you? Most of them
> speak very broken English, and hate it.

Then it is a matter of attitude. Most Swedish people enjoy
speaking English a lot actually, and in the tech world it
makes sense as well, but even so most people get over it after
the initial love affair, of course we don't want to speak
English to countrymen we meet in the street or to our parents
(who speak good enough, sometimes excellent English, my mother
speaks good French as well BTW, and German, and Spanish, my
father's English is so-so, he speaks OK German tho, I speak
and write English fluently but not always correctly of course,
I can read French to some extent and I speak get-by Russian,
this may sound like a lot of languages everywhere but
I consider my skills at a pretty basic or low level, I didn't
score the top marks in school by any means, and if it hadn't
been for technology, education, student life, and talking like
this on Usenet/mailing lists and IRC, I don't think my English
had been on a so-so (or lower) level as well).

> I'm flattered that you take me as an example, but I speak
> and write English on a daily basis precisely because I don't
> live in France.

Yes, hah, you are allowed to speak French about technology in
France and everywhere else where you meet French-speaking
people, sweet heavens! It is just very impractical for you and
everyone else if you for example write source in French, and
you will put yourself at a huge disadvantage if you cannot
read books and source and web pages in English, and _we_ then
also cannot benefit from _you_ if you choose that path, as
I've said many times now. But you are not so no worries about
that, it is just this charade over and over, unbelievable!

> In France I was speaking 99.9% French, including at work.
> We would be writing a paper in English and discussing in
> French about which words to use.

The French students I met were 20-25 years old and they were
fluent speaking English, in a couple of years or a decade at
the most the French people will be as fluent as them, only at
15-20 instead, it is inevitable, French people are proud of
their engineering skills and everyone wants to take part of
the international world, including the French, you can pretend
to be annoyed by it all you want, as long as you still do it,
which is the case clearly, I'm fine... well, I am annoyed by
the whole charade, which the French are the only ones who do,
interestingly enough, but I know you are here anyway so it
doesn't matter really. And those who are not will come.

And a couple of generations more it will be all natural, no
one will even think about not doing it.

> And France is far from the worst place to speak English.
> Try a random Chinese or Japanese or Russian student.
> Try a random Turkish or Thai or Ivorian student.

No! Well, Thai or Ivorian students I never met but Chinese,
Japanese, Russian, and Turkish I all met, a lot, my dad even
has a house in Turkey, their technology students speak English
excellent, just fine, or are getting there, Russians in
particular are a weird bunch in this respect, ha, there are
some who refuse and some who are like Western Europe (i.e.,
very good), but it is inevitable, their education has always
been awesome and they are into everything Western, it is
inevitable that the "English-speakers" will win that battle,
and it doesn't have to take that long, these processes are all
under way sine long... (And actually it isn't a battle, the
Russians that "refuse" do that because they think they cannot,
they are in a "blocked mode", often they rely on a friend who
speaks excellent English but they themselves want to speak as
well and one forces them to speak they are happy about that
and learn very fast, if you think I'm generalizing now I am
but I've seen it so many times I know its true, ha.)

> And to be clear, it's not about the people. Some languages
> are extremely different from English (how hard is it to
> learn English from Swedish?). Some countries have extremely
> poor English teaching in lower education.

No, no, everyone is capable of learning English, some small
(or smallish) countries and language groups (e.g., Sweden, the
Netherlands, ...) has had a head start since it was so
apparently necessary for one reason, and there are other
reasons as well, but everyone else is equally and more than
capable and as we have seen with Russians and in particular
with the Germans who has had a rocket-career in this respect
it doesn't have to take that long, it will all come, so
whatever head start Sweden or other countries might have had -
well, good for us :) we were always clever merchants and
warriors at the same time :)) - but the point is that head
start for us won't mean anything sooner than we would like,
actually :)

>> Wrong! They do, and they do even more and better for each
>> year, and the very small group who don't, well, they have
>> a HUGE problem that should be fixed by them putting ALL
>> their efforts learning English as soon as possible
>
> Not realistic. Instead, they think that their English is
> good enough and will improve as they go.

Those who don't learn English will be at a disadvantage in
every aspect. People don't want that, it doesn't benefit them
or their games and it isn't fun, girls want to talk to foreign
guys and guys want to play games and watch stupid movies and
so on and so forth etc etc etc - I mean, why on Earth would
one not do that in general? And in particular a tech or
science person? I don't understand, why? The Swedish world is
small but the French world isn't big enough by far, sorry.
Deal with it...

> But learning a difficult topic will always be easier in your
> own language.

No, not with technology once you have made that step, then it
is more difficult, well, more _impractical_ I should say, to
speak about it, and in particular _write_ about it, in your
own language, actually. English is already the international
language and the language of technology and science, if you
want to be an international warrior you need this gun in your
belt as well, use only the French guns - you are gunned down,
sorry.

> Yes. But to those who know some English but for whom it
> requires effort, it would mean that they get a first contact
> with new difficult topics without language hurdles.
> They will still be able to access the complete documentation
> in English when needed.

They must and they will take the step, I'm positive, I'm 100%
convinced. Go to a party with 20 year old, as a field trip.
Go to the cutest, most intelligent girl and the guy who is
most skilled with tools and the guy who is most skilled with
sport. They ALL SPEAK ENGLISH and see no problem with it.
This decides everything already at this point!

Translating huge books is just an immense wasted effort that
also have several negative effects that I've mentioned
already. For example this book

@book{introduction-to-algorithms,
  author     = {Cormen and Leiserson and Rivest and Stein},
  edition    = {2nd edition},
  isbn       = {0-268-53196-8},
  publisher  = {MIT Press},
  title      = {Introduction to Algorithms},
  year       = {2001}
}

It is 1184 pages!

And that format (book heft) isn't uncommon!

Are you going to translate this to French because some French
guys aren't good enough English readers? This reasoning is
insane, I don't know how you get it to work in your heads,
that are rational in every other sense, including this one,
but only for your personal life and activities? Are your
compatriots that stupid? And you some kind of elite or
something? And you are gonna translate 1084 page books on
algorithms to remedy that? Ha, listen, it doesn't make any
sense any of it! Hahaha :)

>> and in the worst case they would be deluding themselves
>> thinking they are so great, while actually living in
>> a bubble 10 000 miles behind everyone else!
>
> With this kind of attitude, some of them just might.
> Talk about delusions...

But it is true, remove English from the world of technology
you can never keep up and you are restricted to work in the
fields were other people have translated stuff. French people
had I think with feudalism, right? That's what's gonna happen?
Haha :)

Native French output in terms of computers and programming and
(technology and science in general) cannot in any sense or in
any way be compared to the corresponding output in English.
Restrict yourself to French, that's the stupidest move in
anyone's personal or professional career, you just have to
deal with that reality, that doesn't work anymore -if it ever
did that world is long GONE. Gone but not forgotten, it would
seem! Hah. But know you will come and be here just as everyone
else, this recurring charade notwithstanding...

> Books get translated. Wikipedia is translated. Is it all
> negative to you?

Yes, if the explicit or implicit reason is that people are bad
at English! Of course there can be commercial, personal,
emotional etc reasons to do whatever but in terms of
technology restricting oneself to one's native language (well,
unless that's English, d'oh) that would be a huge blunder, no
one should do it and certainly not live under the illusion
that translations can make one not have to come HERE, where
the game is! You think French hockey players should only play
in the French league? NO, they should come to use here to
Sweden and Finland, where the level is ... another :)
Meanwhile WE should aim for the NHL and KHL, ha :) If enough
of them come, after their careers peak, they will not be good
enough for Sweden and Finland so they'll go back to France,
where they will bring the level up with their skills and
experience, and before you know it the French league can be
competitive with perhaps Germany, Litva, Belarus, Kazakhstan
... well, if you send A LOT of players anyway! But you will
never ever be at the level of Sweden or Finland and never ever
in a million years will the French hockey league be competitive
with NHL and the Russian Super League. So the only way you can
compete with the NHL and KHL is _in_ the NHL or KHL, and these
guys show it is indeed possible: (3 French guys in the NHL)
<https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/nationality/active-french-nhl-players-career-stats.html>

There are 50 Swedish guys in the NHL BTW:
<https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/nationality/active-french-nhl-players-career-stats.html>

and 50 Finnish guys:
<https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/nationality/active-finnish-nhl-players-career-stats.html>

> Heck, *you* wrote a book in Swedish!

Please, you or anyone else get me a contract in NYC (which is
the publishing capital of the world BTW, tho the biggest
publishing house is English, Penguin, right? I think Hachette
Livre is number 2 but they also have their HQ in NYC) - you or
anyone else offer me a contract and instead of ranting here
I'd be more than happy to translate it to English or write
another book in English for that matter :) How about a book on
a tree house project?
<https://dataswamp.org/~incal/blog/index.html>
Or Elisp robotics?
<https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#terror>

>>> And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel
>>> confident with English treat the lack of available
>>> translations as a significant hurdle, or even a barrier.
>>
>> 100% incorrect
>
> You really have no idea

I know so many people have take the step and those who don't
will be at a disadvantage, I don't think they like that so
they too will take the step, it makes sense and we see it
everywhere every day, why on Earth would it NOT happen? It is
already happening all over the world! Even here, I can go to
one of the student house quarters right now and there will be
people from all over the world - we have 42 559 students here
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_University> - all of
them will speak excellent English, and if we ask about their
parent some will say their parents speak good English, some
so-so, and some not at all, but guess what, these people are
soon parents _themselves_, people use more and more technology
and consume more and more culture, watch movies, read
magazines, watch DIY YouTube videos how to demolish their
carbon bicycles, while trying to raise the saddle and learning
something in the process - it is inevitable. RESISTANCE IS
FUTILE!

> It's not really the same thing. Nobody asks *you* to write
> or read a manual in French or Chinese.

OF COURSE everyone is allowed to do it, I'm not going to do
anything more that write these messages, actually I'm getting
a little tired of it by now, I think I'll bookmark these 3-4
rantings the next time the French connection get their way up
to Annapurna (the first 8000+ mountain to be summited BTW, by
a French expedition, everyone gives them credit for this -
except the Swiss. why? because of langauge? can't have
a brother succeed? but Swiss mountaineering expertise is
beyond question - Mt. Everest OTOH was first summited by the
English but none of the two people reaching the top was from
England, ha, typical of them :) maybe the most difficult
mountain in the world, K2, was first summited by the Italians.
of the Polar explorers we have respect for the English
super-human efforts but there is no doubt in our minds the
best in this respect were the Norwegians.)

> But yes, I guess French diplomats make it a point to remind
> everyone that English domination should not be taken for
> granted. You can call it tradition. :)

Yep, Frenchh hangup (Frenchh = French and only French)

> But when I say that translated manuals are helpful, it's not
> part of that tradition, it's from my experience meeting and
> teaching to French students. Many of them simply do not
> bother or are blocked from learning a topic because there is
> no entry-level material in their language. That's a fact.

Manuals - maybe in the 70-80s but I'm not sure, now - harmful.

Textbooks - sure, if you have the manpower and resources and
political and individual desire to do that instead of
something more interesting, ha, but remember that
English-language university undergraduate textbooks are often
~1000 pages. They call everything before or below PhD
"Introduction" which is fun because again the books are
often >1000 pages. So if you want to translate the "intros" by
all means, do it.

And before you say it, what about the French production, which
is in French already? That is a competitive bout but not
close, and certainly not a draw. If you try to compete in that
sense you will loose. The only way for you to compete is to do
it in English like everyone else. You already do it, now you
have to 1) deal with it; and 2) do it even more, and the
French honor will be restored, despite the IT and computing
setback to the accursed Anglo-Americans...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 8:43 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Thibaut Verron wrote:
>
> >> They used to speak French, now they speak English.
> >>
> >
> > I don't know what they used to speak, but nowadays they
> > speak their own language afaik.
>
> They used to speak French, that was the langauge of diplomacy,
> now they speak English.
>
> > We see the effect of this when all EU treaties are
> > translated in all the official languages of the EU (which,
> > luckily, still include English).
>
> Well, they have resources to do that, and hire themselves and
> each other to do the job for the right price. A lot is for
> political reasons, also. But, obviously I don't know how
> everything happens there, but of course the international
> language is English there as well as everywhere else.
>
> >> We see traces of this in for example the Euro Vision Song
> >> Contest where they tell the score in English and French.
> >
> > Is that diplomacy now? :)
>
> I think it is! It is a competition between nation and about
> national pride.

All this focus on identification with a nation must go away.
Particularly in a today's market economy (capitalism is long gone).

After the collapse of the berlin wall, many thought about freedom,
but all we got since then has been more borders and isolation.
A dystopian reality rather than an opportunity for exploration
and seeking.

> But it is also just a show, of course.
> Commercial, monetary. Just like IIHF, too bad the French
> didn't have a team this year (they play the B tournament, with
> a bunch of Canadian guys, I think, so hopefully we see them
> again soon).
>
> FYI I've played ice hockey with Canadian guys from Quebec -
> you know of course that they were separatists in the 70s - now
> (well, this was 5-10 years ago) now these guys spoke English
> in a way that was inseparable from any US or English-speaking
> Canadian dude, no French accent, nothing. Reality, "man".
>
> > Okay my bad. Might I still assume that I have met more
> > French scientists and programmers than you? Most of them
> > speak very broken English, and hate it.
>
> Then it is a matter of attitude. Most Swedish people enjoy
> speaking English a lot actually, and in the tech world it
> makes sense as well, but even so most people get over it after
> the initial love affair, of course we don't want to speak
> English to countrymen we meet in the street or to our parents
> (who speak good enough, sometimes excellent English, my mother
> speaks good French as well BTW, and German, and Spanish, my
> father's English is so-so, he speaks OK German tho, I speak
> and write English fluently but not always correctly of course,
> I can read French to some extent and I speak get-by Russian,
> this may sound like a lot of languages everywhere but
> I consider my skills at a pretty basic or low level, I didn't
> score the top marks in school by any means, and if it hadn't
> been for technology, education, student life, and talking like
> this on Usenet/mailing lists and IRC, I don't think my English
> had been on a so-so (or lower) level as well).

I also speak many languages.

> > I'm flattered that you take me as an example, but I speak
> > and write English on a daily basis precisely because I don't
> > live in France.
>
> Yes, hah, you are allowed to speak French about technology in
> France and everywhere else where you meet French-speaking
> people, sweet heavens! It is just very impractical for you and
> everyone else if you for example write source in French, and
> you will put yourself at a huge disadvantage if you cannot
> read books and source and web pages in English, and _we_ then
> also cannot benefit from _you_ if you choose that path, as
> I've said many times now. But you are not so no worries about
> that, it is just this charade over and over, unbelievable!

The biggest problem today is people identifying with this and that.

> > In France I was speaking 99.9% French, including at work.
> > We would be writing a paper in English and discussing in
> > French about which words to use.

I did part of my education in France.  And was respected for my capabilities.
Same happened in England, Spain, Russia.  When I wanted to get a piece of meat
I spoke spanish in spain.

> The French students I met were 20-25 years old and they were
> fluent speaking English, in a couple of years or a decade at
> the most the French people will be as fluent as them, only at
> 15-20 instead, it is inevitable, French people are proud of
> their engineering skills and everyone wants to take part of
> the international world, including the French, you can pretend
> to be annoyed by it all you want, as long as you still do it,
> which is the case clearly, I'm fine... well, I am annoyed by
> the whole charade, which the French are the only ones who do,
> interestingly enough, but I know you are here anyway so it
> doesn't matter really. And those who are not will come.
>
> And a couple of generations more it will be all natural, no
> one will even think about not doing it.
>
> > And France is far from the worst place to speak English.
> > Try a random Chinese or Japanese or Russian student.
> > Try a random Turkish or Thai or Ivorian student.
>
> No! Well, Thai or Ivorian students I never met but Chinese,
> Japanese, Russian, and Turkish I all met, a lot, my dad even
> has a house in Turkey, their technology students speak English
> excellent, just fine, or are getting there, Russians in
> particular are a weird bunch in this respect, ha, there are
> some who refuse and some who are like Western Europe (i.e.,
> very good), but it is inevitable, their education has always
> been awesome and they are into everything Western, it is
> inevitable that the "English-speakers" will win that battle,
> and it doesn't have to take that long, these processes are all
> under way sine long... (And actually it isn't a battle, the
> Russians that "refuse" do that because they think they cannot,
> they are in a "blocked mode", often they rely on a friend who
> speaks excellent English but they themselves want to speak as
> well and one forces them to speak they are happy about that
> and learn very fast, if you think I'm generalizing now I am
> but I've seen it so many times I know its true, ha.)
>
> > And to be clear, it's not about the people. Some languages
> > are extremely different from English (how hard is it to
> > learn English from Swedish?). Some countries have extremely
> > poor English teaching in lower education.
>
> No, no, everyone is capable of learning English, some small
> (or smallish) countries and language groups (e.g., Sweden, the
> Netherlands, ...) has had a head start since it was so
> apparently necessary for one reason, and there are other
> reasons as well, but everyone else is equally and more than
> capable and as we have seen with Russians and in particular
> with the Germans who has had a rocket-career in this respect
> it doesn't have to take that long, it will all come, so
> whatever head start Sweden or other countries might have had -
> well, good for us :) we were always clever merchants and
> warriors at the same time :)) - but the point is that head
> start for us won't mean anything sooner than we would like,
> actually :)
>
> >> Wrong! They do, and they do even more and better for each
> >> year, and the very small group who don't, well, they have
> >> a HUGE problem that should be fixed by them putting ALL
> >> their efforts learning English as soon as possible
> >
> > Not realistic. Instead, they think that their English is
> > good enough and will improve as they go.
>
> Those who don't learn English will be at a disadvantage in
> every aspect. People don't want that, it doesn't benefit them
> or their games and it isn't fun, girls want to talk to foreign
> guys and guys want to play games and watch stupid movies and
> so on and so forth etc etc etc - I mean, why on Earth would
> one not do that in general? And in particular a tech or
> science person? I don't understand, why? The Swedish world is
> small but the French world isn't big enough by far, sorry.
> Deal with it...
>
> > But learning a difficult topic will always be easier in your
> > own language.

Should there not be enough people in france to do translations in french
if need be.  Which means they see value in what  non-french people write.
People can argue how much they want, but one cannot force other to read
your stuff if they don't want to.


> No, not with technology once you have made that step, then it
> is more difficult, well, more _impractical_ I should say, to
> speak about it, and in particular _write_ about it, in your
> own language, actually. English is already the international
> language and the language of technology and science, if you
> want to be an international warrior you need this gun in your
> belt as well, use only the French guns - you are gunned down,
> sorry.
>
> > Yes. But to those who know some English but for whom it
> > requires effort, it would mean that they get a first contact
> > with new difficult topics without language hurdles.
> > They will still be able to access the complete documentation
> > in English when needed.
>
> They must and they will take the step, I'm positive, I'm 100%
> convinced. Go to a party with 20 year old, as a field trip.
> Go to the cutest, most intelligent girl and the guy who is
> most skilled with tools and the guy who is most skilled with
> sport. They ALL SPEAK ENGLISH and see no problem with it.
> This decides everything already at this point!

Local languages were useful at a time where people stayed and
functioned within their community.  It worked as a support
system.  If something terrible happened in your life, you could
go back to your clan and they would accept you and help you.

> Translating huge books is just an immense wasted effort that
> also have several negative effects that I've mentioned
> already. For example this book
>
> @book{introduction-to-algorithms,
>   author     = {Cormen and Leiserson and Rivest and Stein},
>   edition    = {2nd edition},
>   isbn       = {0-268-53196-8},
>   publisher  = {MIT Press},
>   title      = {Introduction to Algorithms},
>   year       = {2001}
> }
>
> It is 1184 pages!
>
> And that format (book heft) isn't uncommon!

Perhaps one day artificial intelligence could do it.  That would
make great possibilities.

I have read articles in french, spanish, portugese.  If those writings
are valuable to you, you will put the effort to learn or get a translation.

You can learn one or two languages pretty well to write, but beyond that,
becomes too much work and people usually have a quite limited life-span
if you have big aspirations.

> Are you going to translate this to French because some French
> guys aren't good enough English readers? This reasoning is
> insane, I don't know how you get it to work in your heads,
> that are rational in every other sense, including this one,
> but only for your personal life and activities? Are your
> compatriots that stupid? And you some kind of elite or
> something? And you are gonna translate 1084 page books on
> algorithms to remedy that? Ha, listen, it doesn't make any
> sense any of it! Hahaha :)

There is a group of mathematicians, called the Bourbaki Group, originally intended
to make a textbook in analysis.  Eventually became a group french mathematical
purists that became too rigid in their approach.  Applied mathematicians consider
the approach too restrictive in solving current problems of computation.

> >> and in the worst case they would be deluding themselves
> >> thinking they are so great, while actually living in
> >> a bubble 10 000 miles behind everyone else!
> >
> > With this kind of attitude, some of them just might.
> > Talk about delusions...
>
> But it is true, remove English from the world of technology
> you can never keep up and you are restricted to work in the
> fields were other people have translated stuff. French people
> had I think with feudalism, right? That's what's gonna happen?
> Haha :)
>
> Native French output in terms of computers and programming and
> (technology and science in general) cannot in any sense or in
> any way be compared to the corresponding output in English.
> Restrict yourself to French, that's the stupidest move in
> anyone's personal or professional career, you just have to
> deal with that reality, that doesn't work anymore -if it ever
> did that world is long GONE. Gone but not forgotten, it would
> seem! Hah. But know you will come and be here just as everyone
> else, this recurring charade notwithstanding...
>
> > Books get translated. Wikipedia is translated. Is it all
> > negative to you?
>
> Yes, if the explicit or implicit reason is that people are bad
> at English! Of course there can be commercial, personal,
> emotional etc reasons to do whatever but in terms of
> technology restricting oneself to one's native language (well,
> unless that's English, d'oh) that would be a huge blunder, no
> one should do it and certainly not live under the illusion
> that translations can make one not have to come HERE, where
> the game is! You think French hockey players should only play
> in the French league? NO, they should come to use here to
> Sweden and Finland, where the level is ... another :)
> Meanwhile WE should aim for the NHL and KHL, ha :) If enough
> of them come, after their careers peak, they will not be good
> enough for Sweden and Finland so they'll go back to France,
> where they will bring the level up with their skills and
> experience, and before you know it the French league can be
> competitive with perhaps Germany, Litva, Belarus, Kazakhstan
> ... well, if you send A LOT of players anyway! But you will
> never ever be at the level of Sweden or Finland and never ever
> in a million years will the French hockey league be competitive
> with NHL and the Russian Super League. So the only way you can
> compete with the NHL and KHL is _in_ the NHL or KHL, and these
> guys show it is indeed possible: (3 French guys in the NHL)
> <https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/nationality/active-french-nhl-players-career-stats.html>
>
> There are 50 Swedish guys in the NHL BTW:
> <https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/nationality/active-french-nhl-players-career-stats.html>
>
> and 50 Finnish guys:
> <https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/nationality/active-finnish-nhl-players-career-stats.html>
>
> > Heck, *you* wrote a book in Swedish!
>
> Please, you or anyone else get me a contract in NYC (which is
> the publishing capital of the world BTW, tho the biggest
> publishing house is English, Penguin, right? I think Hachette
> Livre is number 2 but they also have their HQ in NYC) - you or
> anyone else offer me a contract and instead of ranting here
> I'd be more than happy to translate it to English or write
> another book in English for that matter :) How about a book on
> a tree house project?
> <https://dataswamp.org/~incal/blog/index.html>
> Or Elisp robotics?
> <https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#terror>
>
> >>> And all over the world, a lot of students who do not feel
> >>> confident with English treat the lack of available
> >>> translations as a significant hurdle, or even a barrier.
> >>
> >> 100% incorrect
> >
> > You really have no idea
>
> I know so many people have take the step and those who don't
> will be at a disadvantage, I don't think they like that so
> they too will take the step, it makes sense and we see it
> everywhere every day, why on Earth would it NOT happen? It is
> already happening all over the world! Even here, I can go to
> one of the student house quarters right now and there will be
> people from all over the world - we have 42 559 students here
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_University> - all of
> them will speak excellent English, and if we ask about their
> parent some will say their parents speak good English, some
> so-so, and some not at all, but guess what, these people are
> soon parents _themselves_, people use more and more technology
> and consume more and more culture, watch movies, read
> magazines, watch DIY YouTube videos how to demolish their
> carbon bicycles, while trying to raise the saddle and learning
> something in the process - it is inevitable. RESISTANCE IS
> FUTILE!
>
> > It's not really the same thing. Nobody asks *you* to write
> > or read a manual in French or Chinese.
>
> OF COURSE everyone is allowed to do it, I'm not going to do
> anything more that write these messages, actually I'm getting
> a little tired of it by now, I think I'll bookmark these 3-4
> rantings the next time the French connection get their way up
> to Annapurna (the first 8000+ mountain to be summited BTW, by
> a French expedition, everyone gives them credit for this -
> except the Swiss. why? because of langauge? can't have
> a brother succeed? but Swiss mountaineering expertise is
> beyond question - Mt. Everest OTOH was first summited by the
> English but none of the two people reaching the top was from
> England, ha, typical of them :) maybe the most difficult
> mountain in the world, K2, was first summited by the Italians.
> of the Polar explorers we have respect for the English
> super-human efforts but there is no doubt in our minds the
> best in this respect were the Norwegians.)
>
> > But yes, I guess French diplomats make it a point to remind
> > everyone that English domination should not be taken for
> > granted. You can call it tradition. :)
>
> Yep, Frenchh hangup (Frenchh = French and only French)
>
> > But when I say that translated manuals are helpful, it's not
> > part of that tradition, it's from my experience meeting and
> > teaching to French students. Many of them simply do not
> > bother or are blocked from learning a topic because there is
> > no entry-level material in their language. That's a fact.
>
> Manuals - maybe in the 70-80s but I'm not sure, now - harmful.
>
> Textbooks - sure, if you have the manpower and resources and
> political and individual desire to do that instead of
> something more interesting, ha, but remember that
> English-language university undergraduate textbooks are often
> ~1000 pages. They call everything before or below PhD
> "Introduction" which is fun because again the books are
> often >1000 pages. So if you want to translate the "intros" by
> all means, do it.
>
> And before you say it, what about the French production, which
> is in French already? That is a competitive bout but not
> close, and certainly not a draw. If you try to compete in that
> sense you will loose. The only way for you to compete is to do
> it in English like everyone else. You already do it, now you
> have to 1) deal with it; and 2) do it even more, and the
> French honor will be restored, despite the IT and computing
> setback to the accursed Anglo-Americans...

Perelman could have written in russian, but who would have read
them ! The most important people working in the field were american
or british.  And we all think highly of Grisha.

> --
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
>
>
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[tomas]

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On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 12:04:59PM +0200, Christopher Dimech wrote:
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 8:43 PM
> > From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>

[...]

> > > Is that diplomacy now? :)
> >
> > I think it is! It is a competition between nation and about
> > national pride.

Hey, folks -- could you be so nice to take that to emacs-tangents?
That's what it is for, after all.

Cheers
 - t

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Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Emanuel, you talk a lot about competition and restriction, I’m skimming 
anything about nationalism (that’s getting wayyyy too irrelevant):

you say “why would people put themselves at disadvantage” while not 
everyone lives with unique main purpose to be “the best”, and not doing an 
effort to be above some level is not “purposedly putting oneself at 
disadvantage”.

you say restricting oneself to a non-english language is stupid hence 
translating from english is stupid, but as we already said, many people 
*already speak english* and yet prefer to read in their native language, 
and yet a book in english might be a barrieer.  A ~1000 pages book might 
be considered difficult to begin with, if it’s in the native language it 
will be deemed a lot easier.  Same for manuals, references, etc.

On the other hand, speaking and reading are two very different activity, 
with different phrasing, and different difficulty.  You could easily speak 
english if that’s the only solution available, you could easily write in 
it, that’s still easy, since it comes from your brain… but reading in it 
is going to require more cognitive load than reading in one’s native 
language.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Alexandre Garreau wrote:

> you say “why would people put themselves at disadvantage”
> while not everyone lives with unique main purpose to be “the
> best”, and not doing an effort to be above some level is not
> “purposedly putting oneself at disadvantage”.

Ah, "the best", you don't have to aim for that to be
benefited, but if you aim for at least one of the better
versions of yourself, that's honorable! When I was healthy
physically and mentally, I aimed for the say top 5% best
version of myself, now I have both been forced and learned to
take life less seriously, so say I now aim for a top 20%
version of myself or something like that, It is just a digit;
but yes, let me say this, if we are talking young people and
young adults in an education and/or technology setting, most
definitely they should do as I and aim for the top 5% of
themselves or even higher if that's their inclination,
absolutely, and if they find people to compete with in
a healthy and balanced way - I mean, it doesn't matter what
I say, this is already what happens everywhere anyway - GO FOR
IT, and most definitely their ambitions should include
mastering English good enough for all practical purposes and
situations they will encounter in their careers as
practitioners, craftsmen, athletes, family members, all of it,
human beings! People are certainly not perfect and that
includes me but I did at least some good things, that said I'm
confident the generations younger than me will beat me without
any super-human effort from their part :)

> you say restricting oneself to a non-english language is
> stupid hence translating from english is stupid, but as we
> already said, many people *already speak english* and yet
> prefer to read in their native language, and yet a book in
> english might be a barrieer. A ~1000 pages book might be
> considered difficult to begin with, if it’s in the native
> language it will be deemed a lot easier. Same for manuals,
> references, etc.

But how long will it take to translate it? How much money and
how many man hours, how much skill? Why waste it on something
that will help a very small group of people, and then only
marginally (it's debatable, if they are benefited even, as
said)? All this to offer something that is already there in
its original, intended form and will take what, 1-2 years to
translate, typeset, print, ship? Something that the proposed
audience could just grab without delay and with nothing "lost
in translation", literally, if they would just master English?
Which they should do anyway if they have any ambitions in
a field where English is so dominant, actually even more so
than everywhere else, where English happens to also be
completely dominant? Does this make any sense to you?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean Louis]

* Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> [2021-07-21 11:57]:
> Well, they have resources to do that, and hire themselves and
> each other to do the job for the right price. A lot is for
> political reasons, also. But, obviously I don't know how
> everything happens there, but of course the international
> language is English there as well as everywhere else.

What means international? Is it for all countries or just few
countries?

Maybe interpretation is too narrow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Order the table by the number of first language speakers.

Look at the number one language spoken in the world, which is which?
Chinese. 1.12 billion speakers! It is definitely international
language by definition.

Spanish is second language by first language speakers. It is
international.

Then comes English, Hindi, Portuguese.


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Jean Louis wrote:

> What means international? Is it for all countries or just
> few countries?

OK, clarification of terminology, there is one HUGE and
totally dominating Computer World *language*, which is
English. There are a couple of miniature - not worlds - but
national fragments, note that these fragment's sizes are
absolutely not proportional to the sizes of their language
groups in general on the planet Earth, so while English is big
internationally in general among other big and small groups,
in the computer world in particular English outclasses
everyone else completely, even if we would put all the
fragments together, i.e. "English vs. The Rest of the World",
that's a no contest in terms of technology in general and
computers in particular, it _is_ English. Deal with it...

You can verify this yourself, the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing
List) often has 10 000+ messages in _a single week_. (Linux,
written by a Finish guy who speaks Finnish and Swedish and
English and now lives in the US, who did it as a CS student
with the help a bunch of convenient tools from the GNU project
which happens to be American, doing the all-American Unix
again, with a graphic system from MIT...

OK, that said, let the number talk: 10 000 posts/1 week

So let's examine the "alternative world" theory, which I know
is false but whatever... let's go nuts, please you guys
present the corresponding Linux kernel development mailing
lists in whatever native language anyone feels like pushing
for, and how many posts they have every week in average and
what is their influence on Linux compared to LKML one might
wonder wonder?

Now I sound mean, maybe disrespectful, but actual this
doesn't mean - and it isn't like that! - that the
US/English/etc takes the whole cred for Linux, just because
they - AND EVERYONE ELSE - use their language, on the contrary
the French, German, Russian guys etc are ALSO on the LKML and
that is BTW numerically speaking part of the reason (a good
reason, don't change that whatever you do) why the non-English
computer fragments are so small. You think the US guys can
muster 10 000 in a week all by themselves? No.

Even in the 90s, if you remember IRC or USENET back then, the
national and language-specific dimension was 1000 times more
present (OK, that number I just made up), now it is all
English, English, English... Please deal it.

PS. Programming languages in different languages BTW is many
    times more crazy than translation of books, which at least
    has the form of a rational activity and in many eras and
    circumstances and field were or mighty well could have
    been, just here and now isn't, or arguably isn't anyway;
    programming languages in different languages (the same
    language? A Swedish Lisp, anyone? sw-lisp? SL? OK, let's
    go here

    ööö ... vaf ?

    (låt-associeringslista
      (punkt-symbolnotation ... ?)
      (om tillstånd (emellertid ...

    ?????

Have you lost it? :)

Hahaha :) (I laugh at the mere thought which is just bizarre.)

--

underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le mercredi 21 juillet 2021, 15:01:54 CEST Jean Louis a écrit :
> * Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-
emacs@gnu.org> [2021-07-21 11:57]:
> > Well, they have resources to do that, and hire themselves and
> > each other to do the job for the right price. A lot is for
> > political reasons, also. But, obviously I don't know how
> > everything happens there, but of course the international
> > language is English there as well as everywhere else.
> 
> What means international? Is it for all countries or just few
> countries?

several countries

the main point of what he says is not “international” but “the”.  maybe he 
mostly tries to say “vehicular”.

> Maybe interpretation is too narrow.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speak
> ers
> 
> Order the table by the number of first language speakers.
> 
> Look at the number one language spoken in the world, which is which?
> Chinese. 1.12 billion speakers! It is definitely international
> language by definition.

“international” does not mean “big” but “among several nations” or 
“outside of only one nation”.  You may consider chinese international if 
you consider mandarin, cantonese, etc. to be different nations.

> Spanish is second language by first language speakers. It is
> international.
> 
> Then comes English, Hindi, Portuguese.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Yuri Khan]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2021 at 15:55, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU
Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:

> Translating huge books is just an immense wasted effort that
> also have several negative effects that I've mentioned
> already. For example this book
>
> @book{introduction-to-algorithms,
>   author     = {Cormen and Leiserson and Rivest and Stein},
>   edition    = {2nd edition},
>   isbn       = {0-268-53196-8},
>   publisher  = {MIT Press},
>   title      = {Introduction to Algorithms},
>   year       = {2001}
> }
>
> It is 1184 pages!
>
> And that format (book heft) isn't uncommon!
>
> Are you going to translate this to French because some French
> guys aren't good enough English readers?

[This one?][1] It has been translated into Russian and it is being
sold at ~73 USD. Which is a lot for a book, and still it seems there
is demand for it.

(As for me, if I personally wanted to own a copy of that book, I could
probably buy it in English on Amazon for cheaper. I’ve seen enough
books whose translations were inaccurate, inelegant or any combination
of the above.)

[1]: https://www.ozon.ru/product/algoritmy-postroenie-i-analiz-33769775/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le jeudi 22 juillet 2021, 19:32:49 CEST Yuri Khan a écrit :
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2021 at 15:55, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU
> 
> Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:
> > Translating huge books is just an immense wasted effort that
> > also have several negative effects that I've mentioned
> > already. For example this book
> > 
> > @book{introduction-to-algorithms,
> > 
> >   author     = {Cormen and Leiserson and Rivest and Stein},
> >   edition    = {2nd edition},
> >   isbn       = {0-268-53196-8},
> >   publisher  = {MIT Press},
> >   title      = {Introduction to Algorithms},
> >   year       = {2001}
> > 
> > }
> > 
> > It is 1184 pages!
> > 
> > And that format (book heft) isn't uncommon!
> > 
> > Are you going to translate this to French because some French
> > guys aren't good enough English readers?
> 
> [This one?][1] It has been translated into Russian and it is being
> sold at ~73 USD. Which is a lot for a book, and still it seems there
> is demand for it.
> 
> (As for me, if I personally wanted to own a copy of that book, I could
> probably buy it in English on Amazon for cheaper. I’ve seen enough
> books whose translations were inaccurate, inelegant or any combination
> of the above.)

Same for me, I regularely noticed that.  Yet I own french translations of 
some important books, such as this one (and I got it from another user of 
emacs, btw, met on emacs french irc channel), and first edition sicp (which 
was translated in my university).

But as nothing is perfect, absolute and rarely objective, there can be 
stuff you can sometimes like in old editions, for instance the first edition 
of sicp contains some additional exercises (some of which are unsolvable, 
yet amusing to try to solve), and I dislike the “object.notation” of third 
ed. of cormen, which does not appear in french edition which is from 
second ed.

More generally, if books used a tailor-made translation infrastructure, 
such as GNUnation, or anything allowing to translate only changed/added 
paragraphs, and only portion of them, that would make translation of new 
editions much easier… but I’m pretty sure it’s not done because (1) 
copyright unhelps, (2) it’s obviously already profitable anyway, even being 
horribly expensive, (3) the interest in it and profitability, especially in 
smaller audiance, may be a lot more chaotic and variable, so it may not 
remain always as interesting to translate.

But more generally a few errors and (correctable!) unaccuracies are worth 
the increased easiness reading.

Anyway *that* is the core, DH0 [0] point of it.  And you may attack it 
pretty efficiently (but maybe you don’t want that but just hope everybody 
feels like you more generally dismissing everything else) on its *own* 
playground (the political field) in this way: having a wide and rich enough 
linguistic sphere for benefiting from it is a privilege, that currently 
mostly benefit the most powerful imperialist nations (france, russia, 
china, japan, hispanophone and lusophone countries, arabic countries), 
dismissing most of other languages

So it would not even be efficient (*at all*) at protecting languages from 
extinction (beside that side effect that english would spread less fast and 
extinguish them more slowly).

A counter-argument, which, contrarily to the uneasiness of reading a 
foreign language, may by chance not be scientifically studied upon, is that 
it’s still easier to learn a similar language, from the same family, 
rather than just english.  Except Japan which is an isolate, and Iberic 
ones which are totally unrelated to american languages (well except 
vocabulary nowadays…), there are many arabic (maybe semitic in general), 
chinese, slavic, and latin languages out there… yet some very important 
families are missing from that imperialist game, such as austronesian, and 
many african, american, indian (and asian in general) ones.

Actually, if I wanted to approach from adressing your core, DH0 [0] point, 
of shared culture, I may say that centralization (except maybe in some 
“utopia” where all languages are extinguished) is not the most efficient way 
of doing it… just as broadcasting everything, in a horizontal, 
decentralized and most importantly *indirect* network such as the internet 
(or more generally human relations), is less efficient as *multicasting* in 
a tree-shaped way: translating most important stuff to main languages of 
most important linguistic families, that would then be learned by most 
people may be easier, as for the fact that most of the human population 
still is *ignorant* (it’s not necessarily elitism, it’s just a fact, not a 
researched goal or an immutable truth) about science and technology, we 
could maybe in this way approach more the goal of making them *aware* of 
what’s important in it.

Most important knowledge is not the one that change most often.  Classical 
mechanics are still used, and it’s good that books on it are translated in 
most of languages (in it could be in *all* languages that’d be great).  

I’m *sure* translating Knuth would be wonderful, once he’s dead (I hope he 
authorizes it, but under american copyright law maybe he’s not even 
allowed to free his own work after publishing so well…).

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le mercredi 21 juillet 2021, 08:11:36 CEST Emanuel Berg via Users list for 
the GNU Emacs text editor a écrit :
> Alexandre Garreau wrote:
> >> Anglo-American beat French to world dominance, accept it.
> > 
> > Nobody told in this thread French had any world dominance.
> > Although you may note that the concern about english is
> > often raised by french people
> 
> They are the ONLY people who EVER brings this up.

ok so what? that a french says something does not make it automatically 
wrong.  and if you already contradicted other frenches in the same way 
well we are not all connected through a shared mind so you cannot expect 
us to learn that once for all.

> > and maybe for some sort of inconscious nationalism or
> > rempent national aversion toward english due to that
> > previous context, the concern stays valid, and you cannot
> > cancel an argument validity due to the people who raise it.
> 
> We WANT the French-speaking people, and they are here already
> as we clearly see, but this isn't the 70s anymore where there
> were one "expert" on the same subject in every god damned
> country who had read a couple of 12 books on the subject and
> wrote a nice summary on in, resembling pretty much exactly
> what some other dude did in some other country reading his 12
> books! The langauge of science and technology IS English, it
> if had been French I would have written the same thing, only
> in defense of French - but it _isn't_ French, and everyone
> understands that - even the French, as we clearly see - but
> unlike everyone else, the French pretends or do not accept
> this in some places of their minds, so they bring this up over
> and over, #$&%@!

indeed, so nobody is arguing about that, so why bring it on?

> >> There is no miniature world of computers where everyone
> >> speaks French or any other language who badly needs
> >> translations, drop it.
> > 
> > There is
> 
> THERE IS NOT, and whatever fraction there is is getting
> smaller by the day, it isn't a place were you yourself would
> like to be restricted to, so why ever would you like that for
> your compatriots that are, BTW, fully capable of learning
> English just like everyone else?

some people don’t, sometimes by inability (yet I can concede that ability 
is usually very connected with the needed abilities to be competent in CS… 
yet there is (unfortunately?) a strong pressure to put more people inside 
CS than the quantity of people that may be competent in it), sometimes 
hindered by some psychological issue (btw that same kind of issues is what 
drives many people away from CS, especially womyns… yet these are 
unrelated).

> In fact, the French language
> is much closer to English than a lot of other languages, there
> is no disadvantage at all in any sense or in anyway, and we
> see this every day when we speak English to people from the
> French-speaking world!

our languages are equally unspokable with unneededly complex phonology, 
unlike most languages on the earth, also

> > not only in france, but any non-germanic place I have been
> > through. English, just like french, is a difficult language
> 
> No, because of popular culture, technology, and proximity of
> languages it is very easy for anyone these days to learn
> English, if the have any ambitions whatsoever with science and
> technology they already know English before they even enter
> the university?

I guess according that viewpoint of yours many people entering university 
just do without “ambitions”, so we should bar that from them.

english may be, because of its dominance, a lot facilitated, but in 
comparison with many languages it is difficult, mostly because of its 
phonology and imprecision.  but french is equally bad about that.  if it 
had been mandarin or russian I’d find it better (but if you start talking 
about tones or number of verb forms and how that would make that 
impossible, you would get the point the same issue arise with english 
making it somehow impossible for some people).

> > with lot of vocabulary. You’re living is a small-world
> > utopia that’s nowhere near even realistic.
> 
> We live in the same world of science and technology where the
> language is English, maybe it made sense in the 70-80s to
> translate the man pages or whatever (the French were the only
> ones who got close BTW, that said French programmers today are
> typically _not_ using that old, incomplete, un-updated stuff
> were you have to wonder -

I swear they do

> even if it was perfect, which it is
> not and cannot be, so no disrespect to the translators

you are doing the very opposite from respect telling their work is 
negative :') but well everybody should be allowed to tell a whole 
discipline is useless or even negative, who knows that may be right (I 
usually think that way about english teachers (I mean, people speaking 
english for real never do that because of teachers, that’s so much money 
wasted)).

> - even it
> if was perfect they'd still have to wonder about what
> everything is, what is interface,

interface

> hash algorithm, 

algorithme de hachage

> API,

the english term is just used (but pronounced in french), but it seems to 
be used only in modern context or by younger people, in other cases 
“interface” (or the translation of library, by metonymy)

> proxy,

used as is

> client-server,

those words are from french

> raster,

used as is

> shading langauge,

same

> checksum,

often same, otherwise “somme de contrôle” when you want to sound formal

> compression with the
> use
> of tagged chunks, Alice and Bob in French? why aren't the
> English-language software options congruent with ... wait,
> what terms are we using, even? The French or the English?
> (Oh, I know Alice and Bob - Abelard et Héloïse, n'est-ce pas?)

Alice is commonly used in France, but not Bob (yet it is known), so we use 
them as well when explaining cryptography (same for Eve (though most 
frenchs aren’t aware about the pun with “evesdropping”), etc.), the last 
two french names sound from the past century.

I mean most languages, especially with technology, just do that: copy 
words.  That’s precisely why 75% of english vocabulary comes from french, 
whose a great part comes straight from latin, whose a great part comes 
straight from greek, whose some part comes from egyptian (or other semitic 
language at some other point of time)…

I mean, when two people in a country speaking the same language need to 
talk about their discipline, do you really believe they use english? 
orally? that would be extremely painful, even if both often are fluent, and 
write most of their stuff in english, and publish only in english.

the fact technology globalize (and it always have) doesn’t makes languages 
disappear

capitalism added to imperialism and nationalism eventually makes languages 
disappear, but france has purposedly made disappear enough languages so 
for it to be obvious.

> > Even those who *fluently* speak english are commonly *tired*
> > with it.
> 
> No, that is true only in the initial, beginner phase,

I’m speak english fluently since a decade, you pretend I speak it well, and 
yet it makes me tired, for real.

some languages are less tiring than others, spanish and russian are kinda 
okay, but english is really tiring because I *all the time* try to 
pronounce stuff correctly, which is of course impossible, and a huge 
distraction, and I could just try to make up some weird pseudo-italian 
accent that would look russian and I would be less distracted but it 
sounds weird enough that I quickly resume back to trying to fake original 
english accent and here we go…

I’m not the only one, I mean you are trying to counterargument very very 
very obvious stuff and wasting most of your credit to any english-non-
native reader u.u

> then on
> the contrary one gets tired of reading it in a language that
> is _foreign_ to it,

to what?

> the _native_ language is always the best
> and the native language in the science and technology world is
> English, US English in particular.

native in this context does not mean anything. in linguistics, sociology, 
demography, history, etc. native has a very specific meaning, and you are 
trying to borrow a weird meaning, most likely from a metaphor inside CS, 
except it is conflicting with some other science so it’s not understandable 
anymore

> > Even I, and actually anybody because that’s natural, would
> > choose to read something in their native(s) language(s)
> > rather than a foreign one
> 
> English isn't foreign here, it is the native language of
> the field.

and yet I can’t be sure you’re right or trolling me about the meaning of 
foreign…

understand “non-native to said person” if you prefer… my point still 
holds.

> > Just to be sure, you’re a native speaker of english right?
> 
> Hahaha :) Are you kidding, I'm Swedish!

well at least that’s still a germanic language u.u and english is a lot 
more common in your countries than in latin ones (and in these it is still 
more than anywhere else)

> That said, these
> rantings are to be put on my account solely, I'm sure many of
> my countrymen who reads this thinks I'm insane or something...
> ha :)

well it is reassuring that you’re aware of the level of the point you’re 
trying to make, at least I won’t generalize anything and keep in mind that 
it’s only you saying that, because otherwise it would have been very 
desperating u.u (I mean for instance lately I’ve had a “chance” to speak 
to a lot more extreme-right-wing ppl, and I wouldn’t wanted another such 
novelty…)

> > or have you tried to work in mandarin
> 
> This instant, in another buffer I have a friend on IRC from
> ROC

wait what’s roc?

> and he speaks better English than me (he thinks that at
> least :)) and I was a CS student when Sweden offered courses
> free of charge (now they do that only to EU contrives) so every
> course, taught in English, was like 50% people from China!
> I lived in a student house for 7 years with a configuration of
> Chinese people ALWAYS present at one time or the other,
> EVERYONE spoke English, all the books were in English, exams
> were in English, the Chinese guys were sometimes a weird bunch
> to deal with on an everyday basis but the problem was _never_
> their or mine or anyone else's (certainly not the French who
> were also there, but in much smaller numbers) NO ONE had any
> problem whatsoever with the English, trust me!

you realize you (a) did not answer about mandarin, (b) that this cannot be 
representative in any way, because china already holds more than a eigth 
of current humankind right?

> > on the ground that its syntax is said to be simple and
> > flexionless, to say it’s as easy as in your native language?
> 
> I'm not saying I or anyone else is as good with English as we
> are with our own languages,

it sometimes really looked like it.  I guess you must admit some “small 
areas of exception”, but not acknowledging the tire of speaking a 
different-from-native language really looks like it…

> except for when speaking of one
> thing - technology. The language is of course not perfect, how
> could it ever be, but it is "good enough for government work",
> good enough for the intended purpose. (I don't think my
> English as in English in general is that good actually, maybe
> my ROC friend is right.)
> 
> > otherwise, do you have studies showing the opposite?
> 
> We don't need studies, we have something stronger, reality.

oh ok it’s a joke, haha ^^

> > There are everywhere teachings of CS in english *as
> > a special matter*, that’s a way to *train* for english
> > because that training is *needed* because it is nonnatural,
> > and it is a difficulty and people try lowering it by
> > confronting to it... yet most of courses are in the national
> > language, not english.
> 
> Not here. But that's OK, I'm not saying all universities that
> teach technology must necessarily do everything in English
> this very instant.

can’t wait all germanic languages extinguish into english so at least that 
kind of argument won’t be held anymore.  maybe one or two generations 
would be sufficient…

> But that's were we are heading anyway.
> In the 70s everyone wrote their PhDs in their own languages.

I bet ukrainians unfortunately didn’t do that in ukrainian…

> Now people even write their BSc in English. There will only be
> more and more of this and that's a good thing. Those who don't
> will be at a disadvantage.

even doing it, not having english as a native language puts you at a 
disadvantage.  just look at the native language of most current 
billionaires…

actually the best thing would be “just get born into an english-speaking 
country”, tbh. but this has been said a lot of times.

> Those who do not know _any_ English
> will be at such a disadvantage they won't be able to
> contribute or acquire information in a way that make them even
> belong, sorry.

belong to what?

I’m sure there are people in korea and china doing very relevant work in 
technology, that is only afterwards translated into english.

> > Some vocabulary obviously comes from english, and
> > englishisms are present more often than not, but the
> > grammar, phonology, orthography, syntax, and most of
> > vocabulary we use stay our national (or even sometimes, with
> > luck (that means not in france) the local one) language.
> 
> Yes, of course, but it isn't about that, it is about English
> as a tool to communicate about technology, it isn't about the
> beauty of the language,

I didn’t bring that on in this paragraph

> I'm sure some of the things I write
> would make a Grammar School teacher blush, but that's OK, it
> is at this point unavoidable and perhaps that will always be
> like that, even, but even now and long before I write this
> people have collaborated on zillion projects speaking English -
> and French and Russian also, and Swedish even - only these
> languages didn't make it to the #1 position that English has,
> right here and right now - so instead of translating, if you
> want to help "your" people (not necessary IMO, but OK) what
> you should do is became English _teachers_,

this is a despiceable job.  you learn a language by using it, not by 
studying it.  writing interesting material in the said language is more 
productive than teaching it.  also language teaching is extremely bad in 
this country, and nobody exactly understands why (but possibly because of 
french and how french people relate to it (that may explain why many 
french people bring that on))
 
> > emacs is only for programmers and CS-ists
> 
> Yes, but it is much, much broader than that, you don't have to
> be a programmer, it is enough to have a smartphone and
> smart-TV and god damn computer, this has already contributed
> A LOT to how people speak English, Germans at 20 for example
> speak much better English than I did, when I was 20 (and then
> I thought Germans couldn't speak English at all, maybe), so
> NO, it is not necessary for you to be an Emacs user or
> programmer, everyone that uses technology is benefited
> tremendously for knowing English and it works both ways,
> technology makes you better at English (ordinary English,
> between humans) as well, because English is not the langauge
> of just nations like the US, England <3, Australia <3 and so
> on

the term you are searching for is “US + commonwealth”.

> it is also the language of TECHNOLOGY, so make people
> COME, don't work on things that will make them NOT COME @%&#$!

actually I don’t care, to me anything of value will be translated in the 
needed language (be it english) eventually, and the disadvantages is small 
and not worth the effort.

I would think differently if languages weren’t disappearing at a faster 
pace than we are registering them (and understanding them, as linguistics 
as a human science is still incomplete and unable to fully restore 
languages features), and/or if the dominant language was less horrible 
than english or french (russian, esperanto, quechua, or korean would be 
enough), so that’s partly esthetics indeed, *here*

But that’s happening anyway! and translation is a hard and difficult and 
tiresome work, so… your discourse is pretty useless I think… given the 
direction in which we are heading, I think you would be a lot more 
productive and useful if you spent all that time arguing about how we can 
totally get rid of biodiversity with that being a great thing.

> > That would be the kind of "user-friendliness", btw, that may
> > have an effective impact on making more women or minorities
> > join CS, and moreover less occidental, as that concern has
> > come more into fashion recently.
> 
> Women are already almost 100% binary

wdym?

> and they are better at
> communicating than men some would say so they would have no
> problem because of the English language to join the tech world

that reasoning is unconvincing

> As for minorities that have historically had a position of
> disadvantage the more technology and the more English to them
> the better!

this looks like “let’s get the rich richers and the poorer people will 
naturally get some more money so the inequality problem will be solved”, 
this reasoning is broken.

> PS. ha :) stop it...

that could count both ways…

PS: that trolling is becoming amusing, the caricature you are building 
could be a very efficient strawman, I’m thinking about conserving and 
pointing at that discussion later (but carefully, I don’t want to tarnish 
emacs’ reputation)

Re: Emacs i18n

[Thibaut Verron]

> > > or have you tried to work in mandarin
> >
> > This instant, in another buffer I have a friend on IRC from
> > ROC
>
> wait what’s roc?

Either Republic of Congo or Republic of China (Taiwan), based on
context I'd say Taiwan. But afaik English is much more commonly taught
and spoken in Taiwan than in PRC.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Thibaut Verron wrote:

>>>> or have you tried to work in mandarin
>>>
>>> This instant, in another buffer I have a friend on IRC
>>> from ROC
>>
>> wait what’s roc?
>
> Either Republic of Congo or Republic of China (Taiwan),
> based on context I'd say Taiwan. But afaik English is much
> more commonly taught and spoken in Taiwan than in PRC.

I guess it depends who you ask if Taiwan is China or not :)

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 9:59 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Thibaut Verron wrote:
> 
> >>>> or have you tried to work in mandarin
> >>>
> >>> This instant, in another buffer I have a friend on IRC
> >>> from ROC
> >>
> >> wait what’s roc?
> >
> > Either Republic of Congo or Republic of China (Taiwan),
> > based on context I'd say Taiwan. But afaik English is much
> > more commonly taught and spoken in Taiwan than in PRC.
> 
> I guess it depends who you ask if Taiwan is China or not :)

People in Taiwan are chinese who rejected the intrusion of the chinese 
communist party, which trampled chinese culture with brutal communist
ideology.

Taiwan is mostly a rugged mountain landscape, not the well behaved alluvial
plains you get in China.  May China become more like Taiwan.
 
> -- 
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
> 
> 
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> People in Taiwan are chinese who rejected the intrusion of
> the chinese communist party, which trampled chinese culture
> with brutal communist ideology.

Well, yeah, it was an extremely bloody revolution and
decade-long civil war that laid waste to the country, the
loosing Nationalist side escaped to Taiwan because they lost,
since then the mainland China Communist regime has been
claiming they want Taiwan back but actually they are happy
that ROC brings money and expertise to the Chinese people that
actually benefits them as well, indirectly and thru various
mazes, but in time yes and they know it; and they are also
happy to have a remote enemy (which is protected by the US) so
they can drum up nationalism and spend money on their
so-called People's Liberation Army (well, "once" perhaps is
the word, again depending on who you ask). This army actually
beat the US at least to some extent in the Korean War (mainly
because of a huge advantage in numbers, which is nothing to be
ashamed of BTW, on the contrary it is an excellent way of
winning wars that almost _never_ fails) - well, anyway they
partly beat the US and _in the 50s_ at that, that was as you
know the US time in world history if ever there was one, and
you don't do that without popular support - anyway now the
Communist ideology and society have left many traces thruout
Chinese society but that's it, on the whole it's just another
form of capitalism or market economy competition between
people and companies and various groups within the ruling
burocratic superstructure (well, they have a tradition of that
so maybe its their way, heck do I know, remember that in
Imperial China the elite DIDN'T rule as one may think, instead
ruling was done by a super-educated bureaucracy), it isn't
like anywhere else exactly, their own brand of it, but still.
Taiwan was once the workshop of the world, then that position
went on to China and Taiwan moved on to the most advanced
stuff, like instead of doing combination wrenches (spanners)
they did torque wrenches, and of course inevitably China will
travel the same path and they already do all kinds of advanced
consumer goods (e.g., my supposedly/actually (?) Japanese
power tools from Ryobi [pronounced "ióbi"] and Hitachi
["stási"] and Casio ["cásio"] wrist watch, all that made in
the RRC since forever, almost), and they are also innovative,
not on the "old Asia", Europe, or US level per capita but in
absolute numbers they are more than competitive, the only area
where China isn't a superpower is actually, surprisingly, the
military one, where they are out-scooped by both the US and
Russia - contrast this to Russia who is a superpower in one
and only one sense - the awesome and enormous might of its
military establishment: the army (undisputed #1 in the world),
the navy, the air force - including not the least the defense
industry, basically the only Russian smash hit (no pun
intended) on the international market save for natural
resources that is good by all means but it makes them
a regional power perhaps, certainly not a superpower from that
alone, and to be honest their skills on the individual, human
level - yeah, it is a poor state, they shouldn't stay at that
level with all the human talent they have in such a huge
country...

So step one for Russia and China to step up their game

                       *drumroll*

                        *fanfare*

you guessed it, inprove their English skills, in particular
among the educated or to-be educated youth and young adults.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 11:49 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Christopher Dimech wrote:
> 
> > People in Taiwan are chinese who rejected the intrusion of
> > the chinese communist party, which trampled chinese culture
> > with brutal communist ideology.
> 
> Well, yeah, it was an extremely bloody revolution and
> decade-long civil war that laid waste to the country, the
> loosing Nationalist side escaped to Taiwan because they lost,

They have not lost, they are keeping chinese culture and traditions alive.

> since then the mainland China Communist regime has been
> claiming they want Taiwan back but actually they are happy
> that ROC brings money and expertise to the Chinese people that
> actually benefits them as well, indirectly and thru various
> mazes, but in time yes and they know it; and they are also
> happy to have a remote enemy (which is protected by the US) so
> they can drum up nationalism and spend money on their
> so-called People's Liberation Army (well, "once" perhaps is
> the word, again depending on who you ask). This army actually
> beat the US at least to some extent in the Korean War (mainly
> because of a huge advantage in numbers, which is nothing to be
> ashamed of BTW, on the contrary it is an excellent way of
> winning wars that almost _never_ fails) - well, anyway they
> partly beat the US and _in the 50s_ at that, that was as you
> know the US time in world history if ever there was one, and
> you don't do that without popular support - anyway now the
> Communist ideology and society have left many traces thruout
> Chinese society but that's it, on the whole it's just another
> form of capitalism or market economy competition between
> people and companies and various groups within the ruling
> burocratic superstructure (well, they have a tradition of that
> so maybe its their way, heck do I know, remember that in
> Imperial China the elite DIDN'T rule as one may think, instead
> ruling was done by a super-educated bureaucracy), it isn't
> like anywhere else exactly, their own brand of it, but still.
> Taiwan was once the workshop of the world, then that position
> went on to China and Taiwan moved on to the most advanced
> stuff, like instead of doing combination wrenches (spanners)
> they did torque wrenches, and of course inevitably China will
> travel the same path and they already do all kinds of advanced
> consumer goods (e.g., my supposedly/actually (?) Japanese
> power tools from Ryobi [pronounced "ióbi"] and Hitachi
> ["stási"] and Casio ["cásio"] wrist watch, all that made in
> the RRC since forever, almost), and they are also innovative,
> not on the "old Asia", Europe, or US level per capita but in
> absolute numbers they are more than competitive, the only area
> where China isn't a superpower is actually, surprisingly, the
> military one, where they are out-scooped by both the US and
> Russia - contrast this to Russia who is a superpower in one
> and only one sense - the awesome and enormous might of its
> military establishment: the army (undisputed #1 in the world),
> the navy, the air force - including not the least the defense
> industry, basically the only Russian smash hit (no pun
> intended) on the international market save for natural
> resources that is good by all means but it makes them
> a regional power perhaps, certainly not a superpower from that
> alone, and to be honest their skills on the individual, human
> level - yeah, it is a poor state, they shouldn't stay at that
> level with all the human talent they have in such a huge
> country...
> 
> So step one for Russia and China to step up their game
> 
>                        *drumroll*
> 
>                         *fanfare*
> 
> you guessed it, inprove their English skills, in particular
> among the educated or to-be educated youth and young adults.

Tho russian realised that long ago after they began publishing their books
about their tortured tales of human suffering in tho western world.
It made many people warm their heart and fall in love with Russian literature. 

Samizdat was their equivalent of the free software movement long before
its application by Stallman.

> -- 
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
> 
> 
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> Tho russian realised that long ago after they began
> publishing their books about their tortured tales of human
> suffering in tho western world. It made many people warm
> their heart and fall in love with Russian literature.

But that's in the past, I don't think Russia is a superpower
in terms of literature and international publishing *today*.
With their very educated population there should be a big
_internal_ market that to some extent is near-international
(their diaspora or otherwise Russian readers in Ukraine,
Belarus, Latvia, Kazakhstan etc). But I think it is nothing,
virtually, compared to NYC where all the European publishing
powerhouses reside (and the US market for that matter), these
guys probably think they are kings or something ... well, some
of the books they publish are awesome, no doubt, so maybe they
earned it? *hesitant*

I've said like one decade now we should have an essay or
coffee table book on Emacs, called the "Emacs World", a super
polished product with screenshot and tables of all thinkable
data, that would be one way to get back at them, for sure!
But it could also be a unique, cool product. There are TONS of
money in the book business and that is reachable without
a huge effort (write one book page a day, you have a heft book
in one year). I happen to know from my biblio-intelligence
software biblio-int.el that there are public libraries all over
the world that have bookshelf after bookshelf with computer
books in English, most often without a single book on Emacs.
The last time I brought up the idea I got the response they
should get the Emacs manual! Ha :) Well, I agree, they should,
however clearly it doesn't work like this.

Here are a bunch of books that are good, except for one, which
is horrible, yeah, you guessed it, RMS's "semi-biography"
written by a "non-programmer" :D Well, I laugh because it is
sad. Assange's book is also poor, but not as bad. The rest are
OK or good, and in particular 'Generation 500' (Amiga),
'Generation 64' (C64), and the one first mentioned,
'A Quarter Century of UNIX' could be used as templates what we
could do with Emacs, easily.

Here are some book-related resources that might interest
someone, maybe:

https://dataswamp.org/~incal/#isbn
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/books/isbn.txt
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/isbn-verify.el
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/issn-verify.el
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/bibtex-incal.el
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/latex.el
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/books/books.bib
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/books/
https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/ecat-incal.el

%%%% computer culture

@book{quarter-century-of-unix,
  author     = {Peter Salus},
  isbn       = 0201547775,
  publisher  = {Addison-Wesley},
  title      = {A Quarter Century of UNIX},
  year       = {1994}
}

@book{just-for-fun,
  author     = {Linus Torvalds},
  isbn       = 9780066620732,
  publisher  = {Harper},
  title      = {Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary},
  year       = {2002 (2001)}
}

@book{generation-500,
  author     = {Jimmy Wilhelmsson},
  isbn       = {978-91-76293-70-6},
  publisher  = {Bokfabriken},
  title      = {Generation 500},
  year       = {2017}
}

@book{i-allmanhetens-tjanst-permanent-record,
  author     = {Edward Snowden},
  isbn       = {978-91-7343-975-6},
  publisher  = {Leopard},
  title      = {I allmänhetens tjänst (Permanent Record)},
  translator = {Stefan Lindgren},
  year       = {2019 (2019)}
}

@book{free-as-in-freedom,
  author     = {Richard Stallman and Sam Williams},
  isbn       = 0983159211,
  publisher  = {FSF},
  title      = {Free as in Freedom 2.0},
  year       = {2010}
}

@book{svenska-hackare,
  author     = {Daniel Goldberg och Linus Larsson},
  isbn       = {978-91-1-303964-0},
  publisher  = {Norstedts},
  title      = {Svenska hackare},
  year       = {2011}
}

@book{generation-64,
  author     = {Jimmy Wilhelmsson},
  isbn       = {91-630-9465-7},
  publisher  = {Bokfabriken},
  title      = {Generation 64},
  year       = {2014}
}

@book{copyright-finns-inte,
  author     = {Linus Walleij},
  isbn       = {91-630-9465-7},
  publisher  = {RootGear},
  title      = {Copyright finns inte},
  year       = {1999}
}

@book{memoarer-ar-prostitution,
  author     = {Julian Assange},
  isbn       = {978-91-1-303764-6},
  publisher  = {Norstedt},
  title      = {"Memoarer är prostitution": en omtvistad självbiografi},
  year       = {2011}
}

@book{programmers-at-work,
  author     = {Susan Lammers},
  isbn       = 1556152116,
  publisher  = {Tempus Books},
  title      = {Programmers at Work},
  year       = {1989}
}

@book{quarter-century-of-unix,
  author     = {Peter Salus},
  isbn       = 0201547775,
  publisher  = {Addison-Wesley},
  title      = {A Quarter Century of UNIX},
  year       = {1994}
}

%%%% Apple

@book{steve-jobs-en-biografi,
  author     = {Walter Isaacson},
  isbn       = {978-91-7429-285-5},
  publisher  = {Bonnier},
  title      = {Steve Jobs - en biografi (Steve Jobs)},
  year       = {2012 (2011)}
}

@book{iwoz,
  author     = {Steve Wozniak},
  isbn       = {0-393-06143-4},
  publisher  = {Norton \& Company},
  title      = {iWoz},
  year       = {2006}
}

Re: Russia, they are a superpower in terms of their military
strength, both as employed by them and because of their
defence industry, Rosoboronexport (Russian Arms Export,
maybe).

Another industry/area where they are absolutely top notch is
space! Even the US guys were mere passengers aboard their
Sojuz shuttles ever since cancelling their own space shuttle
programs. But maybe the US guys are returning to the field?
(or sphere I guess :))

That's it I'm afraid, weapons (both their own employment of
them and exporting them) and space, or am I wrong?
Natural resources are good but they don't really impress the
man on the street this day and age, sorry.

> Samizdat was their equivalent of the free software movement
> long before its application by Stallman.

I like the connection, didn't think of that, but even so the
past is the past. Past merits, while no one can take them away
from you, last 2 years, tops, typically...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean Louis]

* Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> [2021-07-17 23:58]:
> Alexandre Garreau wrote:
> 
> > Translating emacs would require to translate many
> > identifiers, it would actually amount to translate
> > a programming language
> 
> I don't think anyone suggests doing that, I think what can be
> translated is *the interface*, so for example in the menu
> "Quit" or "Exit" or whatever it says (I'm not a menu user)
> _that_ would be translated. I don't think there are a lot of
> advantages doing this, and I do see some DISadvantages, so
> I think it shouldn't be done, actually, but the suggestion
> isn't "translate everything", that would be an insane, almost,
> rather than a bad suggestion.

Many things could be translated, it is about GNU Project to organize
translation efforts:

- TUTORIAL is translated in many languages, it could be done in more,
  this is first essential document to start with.

- Emacs Lisp Intro and Manual could be translated in other languages;
  let us say if it is translated into German language then this would
  be the jumping board or starting point to continue translation of
  other parts of Emacs;

- Menu system definitely could be translate, but maybe it is just like
  so much software uses gettext, I would not know. I would say not
  even to translate it if Emacs Lisp Intro and Manual are not yet
  ready in the same language.

- GNU MANIFESTO (I don't find it), GNU Project and other GNU website
  pages as linked from Emacs are I guess already translated in many
  languages. I did not test it but I doubt that Emacs is checking for
  locale settings and fetching the right translated page from website,
  it should. If user is on German language then Emacs should fetch
  German version from GNU Project website;


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Christ, I shouldn't have engaged in this discussion the way
I did, I was a bit out of my head that night, anyway this is
the same case as everycase else where everyone is just seeing
everything from their perspective and when one tilted reality
collide with another that is also tilted this is what happens.

No one has a monopoly on interpreting reality! So no one
should act like that either.

For example just looking at this pic from my birthday party
one might easily get the wrong idea:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/pimgs/pharty.png

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Emacs i18n

[Christopher Dimech]

There was a difference in focus about the task.  I took a dimension that makes
a more powerful engine.  But one is a success if one is not a slave to another
person's idea.  So we're ok ;)

Felicitations
Christopher



> Sent: Friday, July 23, 2021 at 9:22 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs i18n
>
> Christ, I shouldn't have engaged in this discussion the way
> I did, I was a bit out of my head that night, anyway this is
> the same case as everycase else where everyone is just seeing
> everything from their perspective and when one tilted reality
> collide with another that is also tilted this is what happens.
>
> No one has a monopoly on interpreting reality! So no one
> should act like that either.
>
> For example just looking at this pic from my birthday party
> one might easily get the wrong idea:
>
>   https://dataswamp.org/~incal/pimgs/pharty.png
>
> --
> underground experts united
> https://dataswamp.org/~incal
>
>
>

Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 18, 2021, at 5:00, Alexandre Garreau <galex-713@galex-713.eu> wrote:
> 
> Translating emacs would require to translate many identifiers, it would 
> actually amount to translate a programming language,


No. Eli mentioned that the commands indeed have a mnemonic function but localizing emacs can also start with the help and the UI strings *just like any other software*. The rest is a bonus.

-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor]

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

> localizing emacs can also start with the help and the UI
> strings *just like any other software*. The rest is a bonus.

?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Emacs i18n

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Alexandre Garreau <galex-713@galex-713.eu>
> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 22:00:51 +0200
> 
> Translating emacs would require to translate many identifiers, it would 
> actually amount to translate a programming language

I think this is too radical, even impractical.  There's no need to
translate the language and the identifiers, we need "only" find a way
of providing their equivalents in other languages where that matters.
For example, a *Help* buffer describing a variable could include a
line which interprets the important parts of the variable's name in
the target language.  Or something along those lines.

Re: Emacs i18n

[Alexandre Garreau]

Le samedi 17 juillet 2021, 11:53:24 CEST Eli Zaretskii a écrit :
> > From: Narendra Joshi <narendraj9@gmail.com>
> > Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 11:27:14 +0200
> > 
> > Are there translations for Emacs in other languages?
> 
> No, not at this time.  Translating the Emacs UI is a non-trivial
> project, as past discussions have indicated, for several good reasons.
> No one started to work on that seriously, AFAIK.

For new people and people like me who haven’t always seriously followed 
everything everytimes… when and what were these discussions?  Would you 
have (from memory, taking more of your time may be exagerated) some dates 
(year + trimester) or keywords (to search that would been used in topics).  
Were there many such discussions in the past? 1? 2? 3-4? more?

Re: Emacs i18n

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jul 18, 2021, at 5:06, Alexandre Garreau <galex-713@galex-713.eu> wrote:
> 
> Le samedi 17 juillet 2021, 11:53:24 CEST Eli Zaretskii a écrit :
>>> From: Narendra Joshi <narendraj9@gmail.com>
>>> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 11:27:14 +0200
>>> 
>>> Are there translations for Emacs in other languages?
>> 
>> No, not at this time.  Translating the Emacs UI is a non-trivial
>> project, as past discussions have indicated, for several good reasons.
>> No one started to work on that seriously, AFAIK.
> 
> For new people and people like me who haven’t always seriously followed 
> everything everytimes… when and what were these discussions?  Would you 
> have (from memory, taking more of your time may be exagerated) some dates 
> (year + trimester) or keywords (to search that would been used in topics).  
> Were there many such discussions in the past? 1? 2? 3-4? more?

i18n, l10n on the dev list.


-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
https://mac4translators.blogspot.com
https://sr.ht/~brandelune/omegat-as-a-book/

Re: Emacs i18n

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Alexandre Garreau <galex-713@galex-713.eu>
> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 22:06:13 +0200
> 
> For new people and people like me who haven’t always seriously followed 
> everything everytimes… when and what were these discussions?

On emacs-devel.

> Would you have (from memory, taking more of your time may be
> exagerated) some dates (year + trimester) or keywords (to search
> that would been used in topics).

I don't usually remember search keywords; life is too short.  Try the
obvious ones: i18n, translation, gettext, message catalogs, ...

> Were there many such discussions in the past? 1? 2? 3-4? more?

Maybe two or three.