Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

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