6 ms·

I don't know if it's just me, but lately the amount of interesting stuff (articles, software) i come across that sadly is only available in chinese keeps increa

by gvand 8y ago

I don't know if it's just me, but lately the amount of interesting stuff (articles, software) i come across that sadly is only available in chinese keeps increasing. If it wasn't for these groups of volunteers that translate them to english (and the other way around, also useful) these projects would be completely unaccessible.

kanbara 8y ago
Almost 1/5 of all humans are chinese. Maybe it's time to learn the language. Of course there are tonnes of smart people there doing interesting things.
- hollerith 8y ago
  About 1/5 of all economic activity is US. Add the other English-speaking countries, and it is probably more than 1/4.
  - Jyaif 8y ago
    > About 1/5 of all economic activity is US Perhaps, but how much is in China? And how much 30 years from now?
Crinus 8y ago
Yeah, this touches on something i believed for a long time but every time i mentioned it i got (at best) push back: we make the software way too localization friendly, when we shouldn't do that because what we end up doing is enabling people create intellectual silos - we enable the division inherent in using different languages. If you had to use software in English, regardless of your native language (and mine is not English, it does not even have a latin alphabet) you'd need to have at least some proficiency with being able to read it which sooner or later make you able to write it. I've seen that first hand: i am 99% self-taught when it comes to English and the only reason for that is that when i started using computers and got interested in programming, everything was in English. I had to learn it, otherwise i wouldn't be able to use my computers. (and FWIW i wouldn't be surprised if a major reason that Japanese programmers are both bad at English and they tend to use their own and/or different software than the rest of the world today does is that they got translated documentation, software and computers from the earlier days of computing - essentially creating an unnecessary big barrier between themselves and the rest of the world)
- boudin 8y ago
  What you are saying goes beyond software, should all books be in English? Should all content on the Internet be written in English? In my opinion it would create a really sad mono-culture... Each language carry part of its history and culture that can't be translated at all. It would also prevent a big part of the population to access any content. Even if you apply it to software only, it means that a big part of the world wouldn't be able to use any of those. Now, if the software that you need to use to be able to learn English are in English, that becomes even more of an issue... Also, why English in particular? For a huge amount of the world population it requires to learn a new alphabet. It becomes a much more complex requirement.
  - Majestic121 8y ago
    Language division prevents a big part of the population to access content even more. Is everyone supposed to learn Chinese to be able to read interesting articles ? What about Korean ? What about Wolof ? Sharing a common language bring a lot to mankind as a whole, and is more effective to create bridges between people than most other means. Local languages are of course welcome and should be kept around for culture, but I do think that refusing to use a common language is a loss. As for why English, well it's a bit late to ask the question imho : English has been picked as a common language quite a few years ago. There was French in Europe before, latin before that, but now it's English. I'm not especially happy about it either, since I'm not a native speaker, but here we are, and it's kind of pointless to fight against it when a big and diverse part of the world population already speak English (diverse is important, having 2 billion of people speaking a language in only one country is not really helpful for a common language).
    - snuxoll 8y ago
      > I'm not especially happy about it either, since I'm not a native speaker, but here we are Many of us native speakers aren't happy about it either, English is a terrible language. I have a 6-year old daughter, and across the years we have spent teaching her language skills I have learned just how messy English actually is. Watching DVDs and reading books about pronunciation rules that quite frankly even I never quite grasped until teaching my own child, it's enough to make your head spin.
ManuelKiessling 8y ago
Guess we the westerners now experience what other parts of the world experienced for decades.
- ahje 8y ago
  It's an incentive for improving machine translation, no?
- gdy 8y ago
  English is much simpler than Chinese.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    Reading and writing the alphabet, yes. The grammar and pronunciation rules for speakers (not the pronunciation itself)? English is quite a bit more difficult than most people realize. You can learn Pinyin in a few days, which is sufficient for you to pronounce any Mandarin Chinese romanized into Pinyin. Chinese grammar is fairly simple compared to Latin languages. Whereas English is a rats nest of special-need-to-memorize pronunciation rules. Most of the real difficulty people experience with Chinese comes from the shock of learning the characters.
    - lucb1e 8y ago
      Coming from Dutch, I found English easier than German. Some people say German is so close, it's mutually intelligible with Dutch: not only is it not, I even find it much harder than English. At least from my perspective, someone who knows a language very close to another and still found English easier than this other language, English is easy. Pronunciation is indeed quite a lot of learning by heart, but it's not hard to get used to if you got the rest down. Of course, this might be much harder for Chinese, I wouldn't know.
      - larkost 8y ago
        Two things: 1. As an English-native-speaker who also learned German I find that I can mostly understand spoken and written Dutch through my German. I think part of your difficulty there is that it is closer to your native language where you have very tight internal rules about how the language should be, so get caught up in those differences. On my side my internal rules on German are relatively loose, so Dutch mostly fits in there. 2. One good-sized chunk of the messiness of English pronunciation (vs. written words) is actually the fault of the Dutch. Prior to the printing press spelling was more an art than a science, and the same transcribed book could be found with different spellings (especially true in different regions). Since the Dutch were the first ones with the printing press, many English books of the time were printed there, and the Dutch printers made some pretty arbitrary decisions on how they thought English should be spelled (e.g. the 'h' in 'ghost'). There was a similar effect from French scribes when they invaded England. Now my no means were they they only ones to mess up English (read up on "The Great Vowel Shift" if you want a headache), but they did their part.

by gvand 8y ago

kanbara 8y ago

Almost 1/5 of all humans are chinese. Maybe it's time to learn the language. Of course there are tonnes of smart people there doing interesting things.

hollerith 8y ago
About 1/5 of all economic activity is US. Add the other English-speaking countries, and it is probably more than 1/4.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  > About 1/5 of all economic activity is US Perhaps, but how much is in China? And how much 30 years from now?

Crinus 8y ago

Yeah, this touches on something i believed for a long time but every time i mentioned it i got (at best) push back: we make the software way too localization friendly, when we shouldn't do that because what we end up doing is enabling people create intellectual silos - we enable the division inherent in using different languages. If you had to use software in English, regardless of your native language (and mine is not English, it does not even have a latin alphabet) you'd need to have at least some proficiency with being able to read it which sooner or later make you able to write it. I've seen that first hand: i am 99% self-taught when it comes to English and the only reason for that is that when i started using computers and got interested in programming, everything was in English. I had to learn it, otherwise i wouldn't be able to use my computers. (and FWIW i wouldn't be surprised if a major reason that Japanese programmers are both bad at English and they tend to use their own and/or different software than the rest of the world today does is that they got translated documentation, software and computers from the earlier days of computing - essentially creating an unnecessary big barrier between themselves and the rest of the world)

boudin 8y ago
What you are saying goes beyond software, should all books be in English? Should all content on the Internet be written in English? In my opinion it would create a really sad mono-culture... Each language carry part of its history and culture that can't be translated at all. It would also prevent a big part of the population to access any content. Even if you apply it to software only, it means that a big part of the world wouldn't be able to use any of those. Now, if the software that you need to use to be able to learn English are in English, that becomes even more of an issue... Also, why English in particular? For a huge amount of the world population it requires to learn a new alphabet. It becomes a much more complex requirement.
- Majestic121 8y ago
  Language division prevents a big part of the population to access content even more. Is everyone supposed to learn Chinese to be able to read interesting articles ? What about Korean ? What about Wolof ? Sharing a common language bring a lot to mankind as a whole, and is more effective to create bridges between people than most other means. Local languages are of course welcome and should be kept around for culture, but I do think that refusing to use a common language is a loss. As for why English, well it's a bit late to ask the question imho : English has been picked as a common language quite a few years ago. There was French in Europe before, latin before that, but now it's English. I'm not especially happy about it either, since I'm not a native speaker, but here we are, and it's kind of pointless to fight against it when a big and diverse part of the world population already speak English (diverse is important, having 2 billion of people speaking a language in only one country is not really helpful for a common language).
  - snuxoll 8y ago
    > I'm not especially happy about it either, since I'm not a native speaker, but here we are Many of us native speakers aren't happy about it either, English is a terrible language. I have a 6-year old daughter, and across the years we have spent teaching her language skills I have learned just how messy English actually is. Watching DVDs and reading books about pronunciation rules that quite frankly even I never quite grasped until teaching my own child, it's enough to make your head spin.

ManuelKiessling 8y ago

Guess we the westerners now experience what other parts of the world experienced for decades.

ahje 8y ago
It's an incentive for improving machine translation, no?
gdy 8y ago
English is much simpler than Chinese.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  Reading and writing the alphabet, yes. The grammar and pronunciation rules for speakers (not the pronunciation itself)? English is quite a bit more difficult than most people realize. You can learn Pinyin in a few days, which is sufficient for you to pronounce any Mandarin Chinese romanized into Pinyin. Chinese grammar is fairly simple compared to Latin languages. Whereas English is a rats nest of special-need-to-memorize pronunciation rules. Most of the real difficulty people experience with Chinese comes from the shock of learning the characters.
  - lucb1e 8y ago
    Coming from Dutch, I found English easier than German. Some people say German is so close, it's mutually intelligible with Dutch: not only is it not, I even find it much harder than English. At least from my perspective, someone who knows a language very close to another and still found English easier than this other language, English is easy. Pronunciation is indeed quite a lot of learning by heart, but it's not hard to get used to if you got the rest down. Of course, this might be much harder for Chinese, I wouldn't know.
    - larkost 8y ago
      Two things: 1. As an English-native-speaker who also learned German I find that I can mostly understand spoken and written Dutch through my German. I think part of your difficulty there is that it is closer to your native language where you have very tight internal rules about how the language should be, so get caught up in those differences. On my side my internal rules on German are relatively loose, so Dutch mostly fits in there. 2. One good-sized chunk of the messiness of English pronunciation (vs. written words) is actually the fault of the Dutch. Prior to the printing press spelling was more an art than a science, and the same transcribed book could be found with different spellings (especially true in different regions). Since the Dutch were the first ones with the printing press, many English books of the time were printed there, and the Dutch printers made some pretty arbitrary decisions on how they thought English should be spelled (e.g. the 'h' in 'ghost'). There was a similar effect from French scribes when they invaded England. Now my no means were they they only ones to mess up English (read up on "The Great Vowel Shift" if you want a headache), but they did their part.