7 ms·
Responding to a variety of questions made over the years about this: This is a constant intended to be displayed after localizing the constant. Its localized v
by mercutio2 3y ago
Responding to a variety of questions made over the years about this:
This is a constant intended to be displayed after localizing the constant. Its localized value will primarily be displayed to users whose preferred languages have a short word describing the relationship.
But it ALSO needs at least some comprehensible localization in EVERY language, because I can send you a vcard for myself labeling this specific type of cousin (because that’s how I think of her), and I don’t know in advance what languages you use.
The primary customer of this family of constants is a localizer, who by virtue of localizing Apple software needs to know English, but may not read or understand Chinese.
The constant embeds everything that an English-speaking localizer needs to explain the relationship in a different language. That’s why something like the proposal here[0] (just use the Chinese name for this relationship) would not be an improvement.
A fully generic DSL to describe relationships wouldn’t help localizers know which relationships are actually used in the real world.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28716546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28716546
- jes5199 3y agoare there multiple languages that have this exact relationship concept? because if it’s in a single language or family of languages, the idea that it can be translates into something generic seems questionable
- oceanghost 3y agoI don't speak Armenian, but I dated an Armenian woman once, and she told me they have words for familial relationships that we didn't really have concepts for in English.
- flangola7 3y agoLike what? English already has all the "twice removed" and other definitions that no one actually uses.
- davidgay 3y agoNot Armenian, but, e.g., Bulgarian has a distinct name for the relation of two husbands of (not in-law) sisters. In English, that's just one of the "brother in-law" cases. On the whole, Bulgarian has far more such relationship words than English.
- eitland 3y agoI am fairly sure English doesn't have (or at least does not use) separate everyday words for farmor/farfar (fathers mother / fathers mother) or mormor/morfar (same for mothers parents). Sure in academic language there is probably a way to describe it (edit: and the concept is easy to explain) but there is nothing quick that you can use to tell a kid so they immediately know which of the grandparents we are going to visit without naming them or the location they live in somehow? Even among the words that do exist, like "siblings", I have a feeling that in some dialects or sociolects it isn't used and people say "brothers and sisters" instead. (I'm not sure about this last one but I have worked with a lot of English and American people over the years and it does feel this way).
- hervature 3y agoI can't tell if this is serious. I don't even know which language you're using but it is literally no different than mom's mom and dad's mom other than a space.
- eitland 3y agoIt is Norwegian. And it is serious. And I am not saying the concept doesn't exist, only that as far as I am aware there is no usable everyday word for it. I mean: nobody will tell their kids they are going to visit dads mum and dads dad next week, rather than telling them they are going to visit grandma and granddad "across the country" or something?
- mjochim 3y agoThings like this can be highly family-specific. A friend of mine (German) says that in his family, his grandmothers are distinguished as "Oma" and "Omi". Which are both generic German words for any grandmother, but in his family, they are more specific. Like names. Another friend, they used "Oma" and "Großmutter" (a third generic word) to distinguish the two. So there must certainly be families in the English-speaking world where kids commonly say "dad's dad" and "mom's dad". Even when unlike in Scandinavian languages, it's not the canonical form.
- Agentlien 3y agoIn Swedish our words for many relationships follow a very simple system of composing relationships. A few examples: Mor = mother Far = father Bror = brother Morfar = mother's father Farfar = father's father Farmor = father's mother Farfar = father's father Farbror = father's brother Morbror = mother's brother ...
- blablablerg 3y agoBrorbror.. your brother's brother?
- onionisafruit 3y agoMy other brother Darryl
- xyproto 3y agoBrorbror and brorbrorbror could be any of the brothers, including yourself.
- lubutu 3y agoThe same is true in Norwegian, but then they go and ruin it all with "oldemor" = "great grandmother", instead of persisting with e.g. "mormormor".
- mgrund 3y agoAt least in danish, we have “bedstemor” which behaves likes “oldemor” in being the mother or fathers mom so it’s really that form that is consistent with the system and not the parent-specific forms.
- kitd 3y agoIn the midnight hour, she cried ....
- Sporktacular 3y agoNice.
- mercutio2 3y agoIt won’t be localized into something generic. It will be localized to a specific (long) string in most cases.
- jes5199 3y agothat seems silly
- jhanschoo 3y agoDifferent Chinese languages/topolects have similarly elaborate names for family relations, but may use different words and differ in details.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoUrdu has even more discretization. Transliterated into latin characters * Mother's brother = mamoo * Mother's sister = khala * Father's older brother = Taaya * Father's younger brother = Chacho * Father's sister = Phupo Each of these's spouse also has a corresponding word. For example, Father's sister's husband will be Phupa. Then, their children are identified with a suffix. Mother's brother's son = Mamoo zaad bhai Mother's brother's daughter = Mamoo zaad behan Etc.
- d3vmax 3y agoAdding further to the confusion in Urdu speaking areas when the cousin/mothers' relatives becomes your wife?
- 867-5309 3y agonot just Urdu: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Global_prevalence_of_consanguinity.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Global_p...
- robertlagrant 3y agoHuh! That's so interesting.
- bananatype 3y agoIn the Tagalog (Filipino) language, we have the following words which are of Hokkien import: * parent-in-law - biyenan * son- or daughter-in-law - manugang * brother-in-law - bayaw * sister-in-law - hipag * the spouse of your brother- or sister-in-law - bilas We also have the following words for siblings which are influenced by Hokkien: (male first, then female) * elder sibling - kuya / ate (or aya / achi) * second eldest - diko / ditse * third eldest - sanso or sangko / sanse * youngest sibling (male or female) - bunso (or siobe) I've also heard my grandaunts call my grandfather "siaho" (the eldest sister's husband) but I don't know what's the equivalent word for the eldest brother's wife.
- dfcowell 3y agoVietnamese also has it.
- lifthrasiir 3y ago> The constant embeds everything that an English-speaking localizer needs to explain the relationship in a different language. That’s why something like the [proposal] (just use the Chinese name for this relationship) would not be an improvement. I don't exactly agree. Note that this constant embeds two terms, exactly because this particular kinship term does not distinguish them. In the other word this constant can only reasonably used in the Chinese kinship system, and others will be confused regardless of whether it's translated or not. The reasonable UI should group such labels into some dedicated section like "Extended families (Chinese system)" so that they don't need to be translated literally. Same for other kinship systems, of course.
- ljm 3y agoCustom fields that are important in some cultures and not others would sound reasonable, compared to trying to account for all of it in code. That’s what databases are for after all. You can’t encode every possible version of a familial relationship as a constant.
- watwut 3y agoThat kinda sounds like more complexity rather then less for "labeling translation system".
- tromp 3y ago> this particular kinship term does not distinguish them Then why not call it CNLabelContactRelationYoungerCousinParentsSiblingsDaughter ?
- lifthrasiir 3y agoI'm not sure the actual translator would be able to connect that label constant to the Chinese term 表妹.
- layer8 3y agoBecause that would include father's brother's daughter, which the Chinese term apparently excludes, hence it then wouldn’t be correct to localize it to the Chinese term.
- mawadev 3y agoI was not aware of the complexity of this until now. Thank you for your insight and write up.
- ano-ther 3y agoIt’s quite amazing how comprehensively Apple has approached internationalization from the beginning. IIRC correctly, already the Mac UX guidelines in the 80s included non-Latin scripts, right-to-left etc. Lesson: make no assumptions and be very thoughtful about what seems to be edge cases from your own cultural point of view.
- layer8 3y ago> The constant embeds everything that an English-speaking localizer needs to explain the relationship in a different language. I disagree insofar as you really need the explanatory text in the documentation to be able to parse the constant’s name correctly, especially if you’re not already familiar with that specific relationship category. It would also be helpful for the documentation to point to the Chinese/Vietnamese/etc. terms to provide context. In that light, a shorter constant name would have been appropriate IMO, for developer ergonomics. Even if you want to include “full” information, CNLabelContactRelationYoungerMaleCousinNotViaFathersBrother would have been shorter, if I understand the relationship correctly. (The fact that I’m not entirely sure here also indicates that more documentation is needed.)