5 ms·
What do you mean about dropping i18n? How can we drop that, force everyone to speak Esperanto?
by mattmanser 9y ago
What do you mean about dropping i18n?
How can we drop that, force everyone to speak Esperanto?
- gear54rus 9y agoEnglish obviously. It is quite far fetched, but I'm just tired of seeing countless hours wasted because the numbers aren't localized properly or RTL breaks layout. It's superfluous, people should have their native tongue and should learn English as means of international communication. Also imagine encoding problems which are also great PITA going away with ascii-only technologies.
- pjmlp 9y agoGood luck with that.
- SolaceQuantum 9y agoWith the way the population is going we’re more likely to use mandarin or Hindi as an international language.
- gear54rus 9y agoWestern civilization needs to prevail somehow too, yes. The tech world is still English-first IMO and the tech drives everything else nowadays because it provides enormous advantages.
- plopz 9y agoMandarin has the most first language speakers, but English is far ahead for second language speakers.
- uvatbc 9y agoI'd prefer to take your comment as a push for a common language across the planet. In other words, remove the need for i18n before removing i18n.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI'd start even simpler. ISO 8601 for dates. Metric for measurements. One way of writing numbers (I like the programming convention, with dot being the decimal place separator). It would already simplify many things, leading to efficiency gains across many segments of economy.
- always_good 9y agoThis is some of the most self-centered reasoning I've seen on HN. Everyone should learn English to reduce your workload. It's almost a caricature of the stereotypical redneck who has never left the country and gets mad when they overhear someone speaking Spanish at Fiesta, muttering "but this is America" under their breath.
- gear54rus 9y agoEveryone should learn English to reduce everyone's workload. I had to learn it just like anyone else who understands the need and is not a native speaker.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoMaybe some see it as self-centered, but I find it resonates with me strongly. Now that we're a global civilization, life would be much simpler of global-scale things get standardized. Like, if metric system was adopted everywhere. If people used ISO 8601[0] instead of whatever is their random way of writing time down. If people used one well-defined number format. Etc. IMO what's really being self-centered is - when dealing with international things like the Internet - to insist on making everyone else's life harder for the sake of whatever random local tradition you grew up with. And I say that as European with plenty of weird localized ways of writing dates, numbers, currencies, etc. Ways which I abandoned pretty much as soon as I got exposed to computing. -- [0] - https://xkcd.com/1179/ https://xkcd.com/1179/
- gear54rus 9y agoHow is it self-centered though? There's not 'self' here. My profession (IT) is not the only profession that requires translations. They are required everywhere and so what I am saying is applicable everywhere. My nationality is not in question either, because I am not a native speaker. How is that self centered?
- jacquesm 9y agoIt's self centered because you have already crossed that bridge.
- rattaz 9y agoDo you speak one language only? Even one additional language would change your perspective here. You won't be able to translate all that properly into one language. A people's language is a window into their culture and their being. Each language (and even dialect) have their own insightful and delightful quirks. I could only lamely elaborate here on own experience.