Re: Internationalization

[pinard@progiciels-bpi.ca (François Pinard)]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> écrit:

| pinard@progiciels-bpi.ca (François Pinard) writes:
|
| > It does not look like an opened attitude to say: "English first, and
| > all others then".
| 
| No, but for someone who thinks it should be enough to learn _one_
| foreign language in order to conveniently maintain and contribute to
| code in the GNU project, it is a very practical attitude.

English *is* the universal language in computer science (and also for
other sciences).  I'm not denying this at all.  Moreover, it is very
convenient for all of us that you do no write in Danish, or me in French.
This `ding' list would not easily exist otherwise.  We agree on this.

But let me hang, when told that English people should observe _zero_
overhead, or just have _zero_ things to learn, if a package gets
internationalised.  English people already have their real big large part
of comfort and ease with all software flying around.

Computers are so important in the world nowadays that, through them,
English threatens many other natural languages.  It is fairly indecent to
reclaim that internationalisation effort should not be the cause of the
slightest disruption on English speaking people.  English is very widely
disrupting all other languages right now, and a tiny bit of movement
towards equilibrium should be considered as acceptable by everybody.

| I'm not sure it would be wise to try to explain the intrinsic superiority
| of the English language to a Canadian with a French name [...]

That would not be wise *because* declaring that any particular language
is intrinsically superior to all others is not wise in itself.  This is
fairly unrelated to the nationality of your interlocutor :-).


The point is, for Red Gnus, that Lars should consider internationalising
it, *even* if we were going to loose a few nanoseconds, here or there.

-- 
François Pinard         ``Vivement GNU!''        pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
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