8 ms·

Bitoduc: A French dictionnary for CS related words

95 points by maeln 6y ago

maeln 6y ago
On a side note, I always found the French word "octet" much better than "byte". First off, it avoid confusion with the unit naming (b = bits, o = octet, whereas B/b can be confused for byte / bit) and it is also much precise, octet = octo = 8, so an octet is 8 bits. On the other end, a byte doesn't really tell you what it is only "commonly" 8 bits.
- 0x4a42 6y ago
  Octet is also an english word meaning a byte composed of 8 bits.
- moray 6y ago
  Octa is latin for eight, in fact also Italian has the word "ottetto" that is used more in an academic setting and becoming even less common. It is true though that in French saying Go (Giga-octet) instead of GB (Giga-byte) can avoid confusion with Gb (Giga-bit).
  - thwave 6y ago
    The Latin for eight is octo.
- jonasenordin 6y ago
  (Moi; ne qu' French as a distant third language:) I really like 'octet' too! OTOH, but 'byte' is also good, especially the witty 4-bit 'nybble'/'nibble' :: 'byte'/'bite' ...'quartet' I guess? And the 'Mo' instead of the Mb/MB, as pointed out. But my favourite is 'logiciel' for 'binary'. The article has some words like 'boufficiel' that seems to be derived from that, meaning bloatware - nice!
rich_sasha 6y ago
My favourite “french” word on the list is “cédérom”, literally just the phonetic writing of French pronounciation of CD ROM. Beautiful language it is, I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida, Ordinateur, and now I have found a new depth of this...
- _n_b_ 6y ago
  But then, half of the time the English words end up being used anyway, despite what the Académie Française might think. Outside of government forms, you basically never see 'courriel,' and you hear 'PC' way more than 'ordinateur' I do love the word 'internaut' though.
  - doukdouk 6y ago
    Ordinateur is a very common word though.
    - _n_b_ 6y ago
      Sure, agreed, but PC seems to be about twice as common: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=FR&q=ordinateur,PC https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=FR&q=ordinateur...
      - programLyrique 6y ago
        In spoken French, I think people usually say ordinateur or (ordinateur) portable (for laptop) though.
- maeln 6y ago
  Well, for NATO and AIDS it kind of make sense as they are direct translation of the acronym.
  - rich_sasha 6y ago
    Well, I think most of the world calls them NATO and AIDS. For a counter example, lots of sports federations have French-based acronym names, and no one translates them. Like Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) or FIFA (federation internationale de football association). For the latter, an extra twist is calling it ‘football’, not ‘ballon de pied’ or sth...
    - 6y ago
icare_1er 6y ago
As a french, i can say that by using many of these words you would sound silly. But on the long run, it is clear that through regular changes to languages, people speak differently and actually believe to "think" differently. More and more I see people writing emails with the Anglo-saxon cultural codes (ie. putting 3 lines of chit-chat at the beginning that no one cares about / saying "i am happy to ..." / etc). And politicians are also gradually speaking more and more like CEOs of US companies. They use more and more terms like "resilience", "governance" (copy-pasted from english and with no actual meaning in French) which don't mean anything to most French. They start to have "managers", not "chefs", etc.... they "recommand", they no longer order.
- _n_b_ 6y ago
  As a native anglophone working in France, I appreciate the general lack of chit-chatty openings to emails (even if the trend may be negative, as you say) as I generally prefer to get to the point. But I have noticed, since the start of COVID, the meaningless "j'espère que tu vas bien" ("I hope you are well") at the top of many emails, which feels like exactly the thing you are talking about--a lifting and translation of a meaningless English phase that feels appropriate but adds nothing of substance.
  - moviuro 6y ago
    See Crocker's Rules [0, 1]. The little part "hope you're well" though was a nice touch. During lockdown when there were hundreds of deaths a day, it made sense. Taking 30 seconds during calls just to make sure your correspondant doesn't mourn seems wise to me. [0] http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker
  - alex_duf 6y ago
    As a French person living abroad (Canada then UK), I can say without a doubt that I've offended more than one person going straight to the point. I'm getting better at beating around the bush now.
- 6y ago
INTPenis 6y ago
15 years ago when I was at my first IT job, young and full of vinegar, I would argue with our Swedish version[1] of this type of site about essentially the americanization of CS language. At the time I was adamant about using pure Swedish, even for CS. I had some crazy ideas for how to translate regular expressions, of course reguljära uttryck doesn't make as much sense to me today... 1. https://it-ord.idg.se/ https://it-ord.idg.se/
- anticristi 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing! It feels a bit outdated, though. I work in a cloud computing shop in Sweden and I hear terms that I couldn't find in the dictionary, e.g. "lastbalanserare".
snalty 6y ago
I love how BYOD has been translated to AVEC, which is French for 'with'.
yaantc 6y ago
I don't see an English translation for "jardinage", which is a colloquial term used for a software memory corruption. I've seen many native French speaker translate it directly and talking of "gardening", but it may be a bit surprising for non-French speakers?...
pbadenski 6y ago
It's always been just a bit funny to me in case of French... A lot of these words are of Greek & Latin origin, some of them even come from French (eg. flame). I know I'm going to stir up a hornet's nest with this one... Are some French speakers nostalgic for when French had more influence?
- doukdouk 6y ago
  More than French influence abroad, I think a lot of people do not like "poor English", for lack of a better term, replacing French in vernacular French. It seems to me that for most people, it's more about vernacular French becoming less fancy (random English words being sprinkled are a symptom, not the cause) than something specific about English, or French influence abroad. Random examples: - use of the word "digital" in the English meaning (number-related) when it already has a French meaning (finger-related, eg empreinte digitale - fingerprint) when there was alread a word for it - numérique. - random English words to sound cool. The French Post Office launched an online-only bank called "Ma French Bank". - English but with French words, i.e. using English sentences / idioms but in French. For instance, in French, you would say that something has or does not has meaning (ça n'a pas de sens !) but not that it makes or does not makes sense. Well, expect that now people took the English idiom and use it with French words - ça fait sens. I think (but it is only my own opinion not backed by any kind of data) that there would be way less backlash if there was greater fluency and use of literate English rather than a poor use of globish. People do not think watching a film in its original English version is bad. But replacing _Faire du ciel le plus bel endroit de la terre_ by _Air France, France is in the air_ sounds super lame.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    'digit' is interesting because its etymology is indeed 'finger' (latin 'digitus' that gave 'doigt' in French). In English it retains that meaning in specific cases like anatomy, but has otherwise shifted to meaning numbers below 10, probably from counting with our hands.
  - outadoc 6y ago
    "Ça juste marche"
GeorgeRichard 6y ago
English: dictionary French: dictionnaire HN: dictionnary
danidiaz 6y ago
I like that in French, instead of collecting garbage, you collect bread crumbs: "ramasse-miettes" Also, in German, earlier software versions are located downwards, not backwards: "Abwärtskompatibilität"
Peckingjay 6y ago
As a CS student in France, I've never actually seen the French version of most of these terms. (A very small subset of them I've used regularly though) Some of these translations also feel wrong: Laptop should probably be translated as 'ordinateur portable' and I've seen people use 'Débogueur' for Debugger, but never 'Dévermineur'. It just sounds weird and isn't coherent with the French translation for bug (bogue).
- vmarchaud 6y ago
  I believe there is a little bit of comedy around this. If you look at the repo [0] you'll see funny issues tags (even the tags of the repo themselves), for example "merci mais on s'en branle" which means "thanks but we don't give a fuck". [0]: https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Super! I propose the author of this project get a giclée portrait exposed in the Nef at the Grand Palais. Now we attend until someone makes up a dictionary containing an anglophone translation for 'Coq'? (Yes, this name is a bit ambiguous[1], two interpretations being (a) the symbol of france, a beast famous for making its presence known, as it would, early in the morning, and (b) a shortening of Thierry Coquand — compare CPL and MCPL) [1] The latin ambi-, meaning 'both', suggests these are the only two interpretations. If one were especially puerile, one might attempt to come up with 2^144 interpretations (much easier if one's name is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23857339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23857339 Ireneo Funes) but there would be very little to recommend that beyond being able to write that it was a gross bit ambiguous.
widforss 6y ago
Relevant Ask HN I asked earlier this summer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377270
draven 6y ago
The Github button on the top right says "Scissionnez moi sur Github", I found the translation funny. The tags on the project here: https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr include "Branlette" (wanking), "humour-de-droite" (right-wing humor) and "bernard-pivot" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Pivot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Pivot)
lifthrasiir 6y ago
The repo says that it's "a website to promote french words for computer concepts" (emphasis mine). I don't know about French but how many of them are actually in use? It sounds like another clueless attempt to massively update the already established vocabulary, which to my knowledge was never successful (as a Korean, I have seen a lot of them, a lot).
- doukdouk 6y ago
  Most of them are not in use, or quite a few are joke translations rather than something that makes sense.
- frabbit 6y ago
  Don't know about most of them but I like courriel and pourriel (the latter having connotations of rottenness) much more than e-mail and spam. I don't see why Latin/Greek originating words like ampersand need their own "French" versions though.
  - frabbit 6y ago
    I also don't like the idea of étiquette for "tag" instead of balise (which suggests navigation instead of a label or price tag in a store) https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/balise https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/balise
  - wazoox 6y ago
    But "perluette" or "esperluette" (both are valid) have existed in French for centuries. They were just uncommon words, and it's out of sheer ignorance that people use the English word instead. For instance "dièse" is better known, so nobody would think of saying "sharp" or whatever other English word for the "#" sign. For some reason, "arobase" seems relatively well known as the normal French name for the "@" sign.
    - frabbit 6y ago
      I have heard people use "a commercial" quite a bit in QC.
Kyrio 6y ago
I had absolutely no doubt that this was satire when I was reading it; for heaven's sake, the site is called bitoduc, their proposal for pipeline based on the French word for an oil pipeline (oléoduc), which definitely wouldn't be used by anyone here given how much it sounds like you're talking about a duke's genitals. But the site also lists genuine and common translations, and it seems most people in this comment section are criticizing it for containing weird, unused ones. I think it's the point; it's mocking the French language purists (often from Quebec, actually) who come up with funny-sounding, unidiomatic translations for English terms that people have already adopted. On a side note, I love that we came up with our own word for computer ("ordinateur"), from a suggestion by an IBM employee's former humanities teacher, and I wish we could still do that instead of using English words or some weird transliteration of them. But it's a different time now, one when communication is instantaneous, computer science is discussed on the Web rather than in universities, and words become commonplace far before anyone can introduce a recommended translation. English is concise and prone to imagery, which means new concepts can often get accurate one-word descriptions which are more likely to stick than a three-word French equivalent.
- p0nce 6y ago
  Actually one of the origins of bitoduc.fr was reading a self-satisfying text about how genious the word "ordinateur" was, and how thankful we french should be that the term was invented. That word comes from "ordiner", something the monks do. A computer is fundamentally more about calculus (computare) than sorting or order (ordinare). That's about when the Bitoduc foundation was launched. bitoduc.fr is not satire, it was built to avoid another "ordinateur"; we believe in bottom-up word creation.
  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    Ordiner is what a bishop does. Actually, in a Larousse from the 50's, ordinateur was another waybto call a bishop (the one who ordinates). Story time. During the 80's I was part of a jury for a competition in French for young foreigners. Their mother tongue cold not be French, and neither could the language of the country. The theme of the dissertation was more or less "how are computers ("ordinateurs") changing contemporary life" A Polish girl had an old dictionary where ordinateur = bishop. She wrote a masterpiece on current religion affairs and got an extra price for the tough balancing on the "politics vd life vs religion" rope.
pseudolus 6y ago
The 'Office québécois de la langue française' maintains a number of dictionaries relating to technology (informatique et hautes technologies) and many other domains [0]. Notwithstanding their efforts, a lot of the terms they propose just don't seem to have gained any traction. [0] http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionnaires/index_lexvoc.html http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionna... http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionnaires/vocabulaire-edition-logiciels.aspx http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionna...
hwj 6y ago
Here is a (390 pages long) German dictionary of systems programming: https://www4.cs.fau.de/~wosch/glossar.pdf https://www4.cs.fau.de/~wosch/glossar.pdf
ilovefood 6y ago
The "scissionnez moi" (fork me) on the top right really made my day. I would have translated it with "fourchettez moi" because the first time I read it some 10 years ago I immediately thought of food. :^)
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  You might enjoy New Orleans, where three topics of conversation which are always acceptable are: the meal we just had, the meal we're having, and the meal we're going to have.
  - wazoox 6y ago
    That is very French indeed. In France, we often talk of other meals we had or meals we'll have while eating our meal, and comparing this salad with that other salad, this wine with that one the other day, etc :)
bitwize 6y ago
I love that the given translations for SOAP and REST are backronyms for French translations of the words (SAVON and REPOS).
jcq3 6y ago
It's all about politics. In France Big Data is never translated by "mégadonnées" but in Quebec, it is always because the people of Quebec like to defend their identity against the american culture. Usually you translate a word to understand it better. The paradox is that the people of Quebec speak fluent english whereas most of french people have a poor english. Anyway pipeline in french remains pipeline but pronounced the french way. Bitoduc is a troll because bito is close to bite which means dick in french. Conlusion : It's more a political quebec dictionnary than a french dictionnary.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  Pipeline is pronounced the English way in France. I have never heard anyone saying "une peepeuhleen"
  - jcq3 6y ago
    Because French people working in the IT industry don't know it's an anglicism and are used to pronounce English words the English way. However if you work in the construction industry you will hear "un pipeline". In French, do you pronounce CIA the english way ? And API ?
    - jobigoud 6y ago
      We say CIA as say-ee-ah, but we say FBI the American way as eff-bee-ay. I've also never heard anyone say peep-leen though. Sent through my oui-fee.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
      > Because French people working in the IT industry don't know it's an anglicism and are used to pronounce English words the English way. I am French and indeed in IT. Why do you think we do not know this is an anglicism? We went to school too :) > However if you work in the construction industry you will hear "un pipeline". Pronounced "un pipeuh-linne"? I had no idea that such a pronounciation existed but why not. > In French, do you pronounce CIA the english way ? And API ? CIA: cé-i-a API: ey-pi-aïe or a-pé-i But FBI would be ef-bi-aïe
sebastienbarre 6y ago
As a French who used to live in NY, it really is a STRANGE feeling to visit a French-speaking country like Canada and bump into a word you can FEEL is French, but have never heard of before. For example, we use the literal words "airbag" or "showroom" in France, in the middle of an otherwise French sentence. During my first visit to Montreal, I saw the word "chambre-a-montrer" in a storefront, and it took me a good 30 seconds to decipher it. Every compound word in "chambre-a-montrer" is French, but I still had to reverse-translate it back to English to realize that "chambre" = "room", "montrer" = "show", therefore I was looking at an actual French word for "showroom". Same goes for them using "coussin-a-gonfler" ("inflatable pillow") for "airbag". They do that a lot, so in a sense they speak better French than us French people. Sure, the French Academy, the council for matters pertaining to the French language, comes up with French translations of common English words, but they are mostly derided for being a bunch of out-of-touch geezers.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  Day-to-day language favors short words though, English is good at that. Do people in Canada really use "coussin-à-gonfler"? It's a mouthful and sounds weird. Also why not "coussin gonflable" or "coussin d'air"?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jgalar 6y ago
  I'm from Montreal. It's not "chambre-a-montrer", it's "salle de montre". Also "coussin-a-gonfler" is "coussin glonflable". As for computer-science related words, I think the OQLF (French Language Office) does a great job overall. "Courriel" (e-mail) is one of their best contributions and is used regularly.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
wazoox 6y ago
Weird, the "Jargon Français" website ( http://jargonf.org http://jargonf.org ) has been available for... 25 years, or more? What's this one adding, exactly, out of the funny name?
beeforpork 6y ago
> Double word: Trente-deuzet How 16-bit centric, feels like from the 1980s. I know, I know, dword ptr, qword ptr, etc. But I use 'movl' instead of 'mov dword ptr'.
pixdamix 6y ago
This website is likely targeted at the French administrations like the ANSSI (National Cybersecurity Agency of France) which is often mocked because of a somewhat strict `French Only Policy` in internal documents. Here they are using `Biscuit de pile` for `Stack Cookies`: https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/actualite/CERTFR-2015-ACT-047/ https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/actualite/CERTFR-2015-ACT-047/ It may be the other way around, eg: someone inside ANSSI choosed to use `Biscuit de pile` to make people react: - https://twitter.com/newsoft/status/671213007301648384 https://twitter.com/newsoft/status/671213007301648384 - https://twitter.com/x0rz/status/738272442771202048 https://twitter.com/x0rz/status/738272442771202048

95 points by maeln 6y ago

On a side note, I always found the French word "octet" much better than "byte". First off, it avoid confusion with the unit naming (b = bits, o = octet, whereas B/b can be confused for byte / bit) and it is also much precise, octet = octo = 8, so an octet is 8 bits. On the other end, a byte doesn't really tell you what it is only "commonly" 8 bits.

0x4a42 6y ago
Octet is also an english word meaning a byte composed of 8 bits.
moray 6y ago
Octa is latin for eight, in fact also Italian has the word "ottetto" that is used more in an academic setting and becoming even less common. It is true though that in French saying Go (Giga-octet) instead of GB (Giga-byte) can avoid confusion with Gb (Giga-bit).
- thwave 6y ago
  The Latin for eight is octo.
jonasenordin 6y ago
(Moi; ne qu' French as a distant third language:) I really like 'octet' too! OTOH, but 'byte' is also good, especially the witty 4-bit 'nybble'/'nibble' :: 'byte'/'bite' ...'quartet' I guess? And the 'Mo' instead of the Mb/MB, as pointed out. But my favourite is 'logiciel' for 'binary'. The article has some words like 'boufficiel' that seems to be derived from that, meaning bloatware - nice!

rich_sasha 6y ago

My favourite “french” word on the list is “cédérom”, literally just the phonetic writing of French pronounciation of CD ROM. Beautiful language it is, I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida, Ordinateur, and now I have found a new depth of this...

_n_b_ 6y ago
But then, half of the time the English words end up being used anyway, despite what the Académie Française might think. Outside of government forms, you basically never see 'courriel,' and you hear 'PC' way more than 'ordinateur' I do love the word 'internaut' though.
- doukdouk 6y ago
  Ordinateur is a very common word though.
  - _n_b_ 6y ago
    Sure, agreed, but PC seems to be about twice as common: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=FR&q=ordinateur,PC https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=FR&q=ordinateur...
    - programLyrique 6y ago
      In spoken French, I think people usually say ordinateur or (ordinateur) portable (for laptop) though.
maeln 6y ago
Well, for NATO and AIDS it kind of make sense as they are direct translation of the acronym.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  Well, I think most of the world calls them NATO and AIDS. For a counter example, lots of sports federations have French-based acronym names, and no one translates them. Like Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) or FIFA (federation internationale de football association). For the latter, an extra twist is calling it ‘football’, not ‘ballon de pied’ or sth...
  - 6y ago

icare_1er 6y ago

As a french, i can say that by using many of these words you would sound silly. But on the long run, it is clear that through regular changes to languages, people speak differently and actually believe to "think" differently. More and more I see people writing emails with the Anglo-saxon cultural codes (ie. putting 3 lines of chit-chat at the beginning that no one cares about / saying "i am happy to ..." / etc). And politicians are also gradually speaking more and more like CEOs of US companies. They use more and more terms like "resilience", "governance" (copy-pasted from english and with no actual meaning in French) which don't mean anything to most French. They start to have "managers", not "chefs", etc.... they "recommand", they no longer order.

_n_b_ 6y ago
As a native anglophone working in France, I appreciate the general lack of chit-chatty openings to emails (even if the trend may be negative, as you say) as I generally prefer to get to the point. But I have noticed, since the start of COVID, the meaningless "j'espère que tu vas bien" ("I hope you are well") at the top of many emails, which feels like exactly the thing you are talking about--a lifting and translation of a meaningless English phase that feels appropriate but adds nothing of substance.
- moviuro 6y ago
  See Crocker's Rules [0, 1]. The little part "hope you're well" though was a nice touch. During lockdown when there were hundreds of deaths a day, it made sense. Taking 30 seconds during calls just to make sure your correspondant doesn't mourn seems wise to me. [0] http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker
- alex_duf 6y ago
  As a French person living abroad (Canada then UK), I can say without a doubt that I've offended more than one person going straight to the point. I'm getting better at beating around the bush now.
6y ago

INTPenis 6y ago

15 years ago when I was at my first IT job, young and full of vinegar, I would argue with our Swedish version[1] of this type of site about essentially the americanization of CS language. At the time I was adamant about using pure Swedish, even for CS. I had some crazy ideas for how to translate regular expressions, of course reguljära uttryck doesn't make as much sense to me today... 1. https://it-ord.idg.se/ https://it-ord.idg.se/

anticristi 6y ago
Thanks for sharing! It feels a bit outdated, though. I work in a cloud computing shop in Sweden and I hear terms that I couldn't find in the dictionary, e.g. "lastbalanserare".

snalty 6y ago

I love how BYOD has been translated to AVEC, which is French for 'with'.

yaantc 6y ago

I don't see an English translation for "jardinage", which is a colloquial term used for a software memory corruption. I've seen many native French speaker translate it directly and talking of "gardening", but it may be a bit surprising for non-French speakers?...

pbadenski 6y ago

It's always been just a bit funny to me in case of French... A lot of these words are of Greek & Latin origin, some of them even come from French (eg. flame). I know I'm going to stir up a hornet's nest with this one... Are some French speakers nostalgic for when French had more influence?

doukdouk 6y ago
More than French influence abroad, I think a lot of people do not like "poor English", for lack of a better term, replacing French in vernacular French. It seems to me that for most people, it's more about vernacular French becoming less fancy (random English words being sprinkled are a symptom, not the cause) than something specific about English, or French influence abroad. Random examples: - use of the word "digital" in the English meaning (number-related) when it already has a French meaning (finger-related, eg empreinte digitale - fingerprint) when there was alread a word for it - numérique. - random English words to sound cool. The French Post Office launched an online-only bank called "Ma French Bank". - English but with French words, i.e. using English sentences / idioms but in French. For instance, in French, you would say that something has or does not has meaning (ça n'a pas de sens !) but not that it makes or does not makes sense. Well, expect that now people took the English idiom and use it with French words - ça fait sens. I think (but it is only my own opinion not backed by any kind of data) that there would be way less backlash if there was greater fluency and use of literate English rather than a poor use of globish. People do not think watching a film in its original English version is bad. But replacing _Faire du ciel le plus bel endroit de la terre_ by _Air France, France is in the air_ sounds super lame.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  'digit' is interesting because its etymology is indeed 'finger' (latin 'digitus' that gave 'doigt' in French). In English it retains that meaning in specific cases like anatomy, but has otherwise shifted to meaning numbers below 10, probably from counting with our hands.
- outadoc 6y ago
  "Ça juste marche"

GeorgeRichard 6y ago

English: dictionary French: dictionnaire HN: dictionnary

danidiaz 6y ago

I like that in French, instead of collecting garbage, you collect bread crumbs: "ramasse-miettes" Also, in German, earlier software versions are located downwards, not backwards: "Abwärtskompatibilität"

Peckingjay 6y ago

As a CS student in France, I've never actually seen the French version of most of these terms. (A very small subset of them I've used regularly though) Some of these translations also feel wrong: Laptop should probably be translated as 'ordinateur portable' and I've seen people use 'Débogueur' for Debugger, but never 'Dévermineur'. It just sounds weird and isn't coherent with the French translation for bug (bogue).

vmarchaud 6y ago
I believe there is a little bit of comedy around this. If you look at the repo [0] you'll see funny issues tags (even the tags of the repo themselves), for example "merci mais on s'en branle" which means "thanks but we don't give a fuck". [0]: https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Super! I propose the author of this project get a giclée portrait exposed in the Nef at the Grand Palais. Now we attend until someone makes up a dictionary containing an anglophone translation for 'Coq'? (Yes, this name is a bit ambiguous[1], two interpretations being (a) the symbol of france, a beast famous for making its presence known, as it would, early in the morning, and (b) a shortening of Thierry Coquand — compare CPL and MCPL) [1] The latin ambi-, meaning 'both', suggests these are the only two interpretations. If one were especially puerile, one might attempt to come up with 2^144 interpretations (much easier if one's name is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23857339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23857339 Ireneo Funes) but there would be very little to recommend that beyond being able to write that it was a gross bit ambiguous.

widforss 6y ago

Relevant Ask HN I asked earlier this summer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377270

draven 6y ago

The Github button on the top right says "Scissionnez moi sur Github", I found the translation funny. The tags on the project here: https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr include "Branlette" (wanking), "humour-de-droite" (right-wing humor) and "bernard-pivot" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Pivot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Pivot)

lifthrasiir 6y ago

The repo says that it's "a website to promote french words for computer concepts" (emphasis mine). I don't know about French but how many of them are actually in use? It sounds like another clueless attempt to massively update the already established vocabulary, which to my knowledge was never successful (as a Korean, I have seen a lot of them, a lot).

doukdouk 6y ago
Most of them are not in use, or quite a few are joke translations rather than something that makes sense.
frabbit 6y ago
Don't know about most of them but I like courriel and pourriel (the latter having connotations of rottenness) much more than e-mail and spam. I don't see why Latin/Greek originating words like ampersand need their own "French" versions though.
- frabbit 6y ago
  I also don't like the idea of étiquette for "tag" instead of balise (which suggests navigation instead of a label or price tag in a store) https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/balise https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/balise
- wazoox 6y ago
  But "perluette" or "esperluette" (both are valid) have existed in French for centuries. They were just uncommon words, and it's out of sheer ignorance that people use the English word instead. For instance "dièse" is better known, so nobody would think of saying "sharp" or whatever other English word for the "#" sign. For some reason, "arobase" seems relatively well known as the normal French name for the "@" sign.
  - frabbit 6y ago
    I have heard people use "a commercial" quite a bit in QC.

Kyrio 6y ago

I had absolutely no doubt that this was satire when I was reading it; for heaven's sake, the site is called bitoduc, their proposal for pipeline based on the French word for an oil pipeline (oléoduc), which definitely wouldn't be used by anyone here given how much it sounds like you're talking about a duke's genitals. But the site also lists genuine and common translations, and it seems most people in this comment section are criticizing it for containing weird, unused ones. I think it's the point; it's mocking the French language purists (often from Quebec, actually) who come up with funny-sounding, unidiomatic translations for English terms that people have already adopted. On a side note, I love that we came up with our own word for computer ("ordinateur"), from a suggestion by an IBM employee's former humanities teacher, and I wish we could still do that instead of using English words or some weird transliteration of them. But it's a different time now, one when communication is instantaneous, computer science is discussed on the Web rather than in universities, and words become commonplace far before anyone can introduce a recommended translation. English is concise and prone to imagery, which means new concepts can often get accurate one-word descriptions which are more likely to stick than a three-word French equivalent.

p0nce 6y ago
Actually one of the origins of bitoduc.fr was reading a self-satisfying text about how genious the word "ordinateur" was, and how thankful we french should be that the term was invented. That word comes from "ordiner", something the monks do. A computer is fundamentally more about calculus (computare) than sorting or order (ordinare). That's about when the Bitoduc foundation was launched. bitoduc.fr is not satire, it was built to avoid another "ordinateur"; we believe in bottom-up word creation.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  Ordiner is what a bishop does. Actually, in a Larousse from the 50's, ordinateur was another waybto call a bishop (the one who ordinates). Story time. During the 80's I was part of a jury for a competition in French for young foreigners. Their mother tongue cold not be French, and neither could the language of the country. The theme of the dissertation was more or less "how are computers ("ordinateurs") changing contemporary life" A Polish girl had an old dictionary where ordinateur = bishop. She wrote a masterpiece on current religion affairs and got an extra price for the tough balancing on the "politics vd life vs religion" rope.

pseudolus 6y ago

The 'Office québécois de la langue française' maintains a number of dictionaries relating to technology (informatique et hautes technologies) and many other domains [0]. Notwithstanding their efforts, a lot of the terms they propose just don't seem to have gained any traction. [0] http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionnaires/index_lexvoc.html http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionna... http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionnaires/vocabulaire-edition-logiciels.aspx http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionna...

hwj 6y ago

Here is a (390 pages long) German dictionary of systems programming: https://www4.cs.fau.de/~wosch/glossar.pdf https://www4.cs.fau.de/~wosch/glossar.pdf

ilovefood 6y ago

The "scissionnez moi" (fork me) on the top right really made my day. I would have translated it with "fourchettez moi" because the first time I read it some 10 years ago I immediately thought of food. :^)

082349872349872 6y ago
You might enjoy New Orleans, where three topics of conversation which are always acceptable are: the meal we just had, the meal we're having, and the meal we're going to have.
- wazoox 6y ago
  That is very French indeed. In France, we often talk of other meals we had or meals we'll have while eating our meal, and comparing this salad with that other salad, this wine with that one the other day, etc :)

bitwize 6y ago

I love that the given translations for SOAP and REST are backronyms for French translations of the words (SAVON and REPOS).

jcq3 6y ago

It's all about politics. In France Big Data is never translated by "mégadonnées" but in Quebec, it is always because the people of Quebec like to defend their identity against the american culture. Usually you translate a word to understand it better. The paradox is that the people of Quebec speak fluent english whereas most of french people have a poor english. Anyway pipeline in french remains pipeline but pronounced the french way. Bitoduc is a troll because bito is close to bite which means dick in french. Conlusion : It's more a political quebec dictionnary than a french dictionnary.

BrandoElFollito 6y ago
Pipeline is pronounced the English way in France. I have never heard anyone saying "une peepeuhleen"
- jcq3 6y ago
  Because French people working in the IT industry don't know it's an anglicism and are used to pronounce English words the English way. However if you work in the construction industry you will hear "un pipeline". In French, do you pronounce CIA the english way ? And API ?
  - jobigoud 6y ago
    We say CIA as say-ee-ah, but we say FBI the American way as eff-bee-ay. I've also never heard anyone say peep-leen though. Sent through my oui-fee.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    > Because French people working in the IT industry don't know it's an anglicism and are used to pronounce English words the English way. I am French and indeed in IT. Why do you think we do not know this is an anglicism? We went to school too :) > However if you work in the construction industry you will hear "un pipeline". Pronounced "un pipeuh-linne"? I had no idea that such a pronounciation existed but why not. > In French, do you pronounce CIA the english way ? And API ? CIA: cé-i-a API: ey-pi-aïe or a-pé-i But FBI would be ef-bi-aïe

sebastienbarre 6y ago

As a French who used to live in NY, it really is a STRANGE feeling to visit a French-speaking country like Canada and bump into a word you can FEEL is French, but have never heard of before. For example, we use the literal words "airbag" or "showroom" in France, in the middle of an otherwise French sentence. During my first visit to Montreal, I saw the word "chambre-a-montrer" in a storefront, and it took me a good 30 seconds to decipher it. Every compound word in "chambre-a-montrer" is French, but I still had to reverse-translate it back to English to realize that "chambre" = "room", "montrer" = "show", therefore I was looking at an actual French word for "showroom". Same goes for them using "coussin-a-gonfler" ("inflatable pillow") for "airbag". They do that a lot, so in a sense they speak better French than us French people. Sure, the French Academy, the council for matters pertaining to the French language, comes up with French translations of common English words, but they are mostly derided for being a bunch of out-of-touch geezers.

jobigoud 6y ago
Day-to-day language favors short words though, English is good at that. Do people in Canada really use "coussin-à-gonfler"? It's a mouthful and sounds weird. Also why not "coussin gonflable" or "coussin d'air"?
- deleted 6y ago
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jgalar 6y ago
I'm from Montreal. It's not "chambre-a-montrer", it's "salle de montre". Also "coussin-a-gonfler" is "coussin glonflable". As for computer-science related words, I think the OQLF (French Language Office) does a great job overall. "Courriel" (e-mail) is one of their best contributions and is used regularly.
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wazoox 6y ago

Weird, the "Jargon Français" website ( http://jargonf.org http://jargonf.org ) has been available for... 25 years, or more? What's this one adding, exactly, out of the funny name?

beeforpork 6y ago

> Double word: Trente-deuzet How 16-bit centric, feels like from the 1980s. I know, I know, dword ptr, qword ptr, etc. But I use 'movl' instead of 'mov dword ptr'.

pixdamix 6y ago

This website is likely targeted at the French administrations like the ANSSI (National Cybersecurity Agency of France) which is often mocked because of a somewhat strict `French Only Policy` in internal documents. Here they are using `Biscuit de pile` for `Stack Cookies`: https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/actualite/CERTFR-2015-ACT-047/ https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/actualite/CERTFR-2015-ACT-047/ It may be the other way around, eg: someone inside ANSSI choosed to use `Biscuit de pile` to make people react: - https://twitter.com/newsoft/status/671213007301648384 https://twitter.com/newsoft/status/671213007301648384 - https://twitter.com/x0rz/status/738272442771202048 https://twitter.com/x0rz/status/738272442771202048