Re: Emacs i18n

[Emanuel Berg]

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