3 ms·

Would you be OK with "filter messages in the bin" adding "في: سلة المهملات" to the search bar?

pwinnski 6y ago
If I were using software or services created by Arabic-speaking developers or from a company that does business primarily in Arabic, sure. I would expect such things, in fact.
- hrktb 6y ago
  The whole issue is designing software around the assumption that there will be a primary group. It means all other groups become second class citizens, and you might not even understand who will be your real primary group at the time of coding the service.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    In theory, I agree: there should be no second-class users of any software. In practice, I'm not sure how that's possible. I18N is hard, really, really hard, to the point that only very large teams can really get things even close to right. Really, you almost need as many people working on the issue as there are written languages, or at least some people are going to be second-class users, right? But let's says we stick with EFIGS, since that covers most of the western world and supporting Arabic and several different Asian character sets is well outside the expertise of the majority of people reading this page. That's still really, really complex. Maybe most of all for Americans, who can easily live our entire lives without encountering anything other than American culture. I mean, I've spent a lot of time trying to tease Traditional Chinese subtitles apart from Simplified Chinese subtitles, and then watching how the resulting Chinese subtitles handle large numbers, to know that I'm not the person for the job!
ipython 6y ago
If that string works worldwide, then fine. At some point you're going to tick off someone. IMO it's better to be consistent. As a counter example, why aren't URLs in arabic too, for example? "https://news.ycombinator.com/login https://news.ycombinator.com/login" doesn't make sense to an arabic speaker. Should we also force service providers to alias "/login" to "/تسجيل الدخول" as well?(forgive me, I just googled 'login in arabic' and picked the first result) You could make the same argument about every programming language in use today. I don't see a mainstream programming language that doesn't use english based reserved words; for better or worse, the legacy of ASCII and english lives on.

If I were using software or services created by Arabic-speaking developers or from a company that does business primarily in Arabic, sure. I would expect such things, in fact.

hrktb 6y ago
The whole issue is designing software around the assumption that there will be a primary group. It means all other groups become second class citizens, and you might not even understand who will be your real primary group at the time of coding the service.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  In theory, I agree: there should be no second-class users of any software. In practice, I'm not sure how that's possible. I18N is hard, really, really hard, to the point that only very large teams can really get things even close to right. Really, you almost need as many people working on the issue as there are written languages, or at least some people are going to be second-class users, right? But let's says we stick with EFIGS, since that covers most of the western world and supporting Arabic and several different Asian character sets is well outside the expertise of the majority of people reading this page. That's still really, really complex. Maybe most of all for Americans, who can easily live our entire lives without encountering anything other than American culture. I mean, I've spent a lot of time trying to tease Traditional Chinese subtitles apart from Simplified Chinese subtitles, and then watching how the resulting Chinese subtitles handle large numbers, to know that I'm not the person for the job!

ipython 6y ago

If that string works worldwide, then fine. At some point you're going to tick off someone. IMO it's better to be consistent. As a counter example, why aren't URLs in arabic too, for example? "https://news.ycombinator.com/login https://news.ycombinator.com/login" doesn't make sense to an arabic speaker. Should we also force service providers to alias "/login" to "/تسجيل الدخول" as well?(forgive me, I just googled 'login in arabic' and picked the first result) You could make the same argument about every programming language in use today. I don't see a mainstream programming language that doesn't use english based reserved words; for better or worse, the legacy of ASCII and english lives on.