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Obviously I'm not part of a real minority language but I've tried to use my software in English over German for many years just because it's a lot easier to sea

by wink 7y ago

Obviously I'm not part of a real minority language but I've tried to use my software in English over German for many years just because it's a lot easier to search for error messages. OK, maybe I'm just a pessimist, but some real reasons (if you understand the language well enough) is that English is usually the original and so the localization can be ok or bad, but it's usually not better than the original. And as I said, this is German and not some language spoken by just a few people. That said, I'd love to know more about the generic impression of how well localization works for Spanish or Russian, languages with a lot more speakers. I suppose with UTF-8 it's at least only a few mojibake errors and not total mayhem like in the ASCII times... And no, I'm not arguing other languages should not be on the internet but for technical stuff (and news) I somehow really prefer English, maybe it's because I've been hanging around online and in chatrooms in English for too many decades.

Majestic121 7y ago
I've been doing the exact same with French for the past few years : you manage to find a lot of decent quality stuff in French overall, but as soon as you need to look up GitHub issues or stack overflow answers, using French is a clear issue.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Interestingly enough, while using the Internet, learning English came naturally, but I don't really see a point of learning other languages. I wonder why that is. Maybe the benefits are just too deeply hidden or there aren't enough benefits. Possibly there is a bias in search engines that enables the hiding of resources in other languages. (While they are quite persistent to offer me results in the language of the country I'm residing in, despite doing all my searches in English.)
  - wink 7y ago
    Maybe my view is skewed by the fact (well, I think it is so) that I learn languages a lot faster by speaking or surrounding myself with them. Studying at home simply does not work for me. I love languages, but I'd prefer to be fluent before using them for important stuff.
wodenokoto 7y ago
Is mojibake a general, known term? I thought it was only used in Japanese related circles. For those not in the know, mojibake is when text looks like garbage, usually due to text encoding errors.

by wink 7y ago

Majestic121 7y ago

I've been doing the exact same with French for the past few years : you manage to find a lot of decent quality stuff in French overall, but as soon as you need to look up GitHub issues or stack overflow answers, using French is a clear issue.

Kaiyou 7y ago
Interestingly enough, while using the Internet, learning English came naturally, but I don't really see a point of learning other languages. I wonder why that is. Maybe the benefits are just too deeply hidden or there aren't enough benefits. Possibly there is a bias in search engines that enables the hiding of resources in other languages. (While they are quite persistent to offer me results in the language of the country I'm residing in, despite doing all my searches in English.)
- wink 7y ago
  Maybe my view is skewed by the fact (well, I think it is so) that I learn languages a lot faster by speaking or surrounding myself with them. Studying at home simply does not work for me. I love languages, but I'd prefer to be fluent before using them for important stuff.

wodenokoto 7y ago

Is mojibake a general, known term? I thought it was only used in Japanese related circles. For those not in the know, mojibake is when text looks like garbage, usually due to text encoding errors.