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> I am a native Swedish speaker and I have had a hard policy since I was a teenager to have all electronics set to English and not Swedish. Why? The base reaso

> I am a native Swedish speaker and I have had a hard policy since I was a teenager to have all electronics set to English and not Swedish. Why? The base reason is that Scandinavian teenagers can learn English by sheer osmosis from Anglo culture. (That is not the case in many other places.) Then it makes perfect sense to: > Because the translations are lossy at best. Since (my reason at least) is that I can troubleshoot problems using the English Internet corpus. And I don’t need to bother with multiple terms. Granted I was older before I committed to this practice.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> (That is not the case in many other places.) Practical angle: so let's add another datapoint! The same is the case in Poland. Seriously though, it's just a consequence of history. Computers and software were imported to everywhere around the world rapidly; no country wanted to put themselves at economic disadvantage by blocking sales of hardware and software until they 100% up to specs regarding consumer products being fully explained and operable in native language (in fact, I suspect such regulations came about after computers became a thing in any given place). > Since (my reason at least) is that I can troubleshoot problems using the English Internet corpus. And I don’t need to bother with multiple terms. For me it's more of the latter. Translations love to screw terminology up, introducing multiple distinct terms for the same abstract concept, and using them inconsistently (often the result of multiple, independent, half-assed passes at translating the user-facing text, manuals, etc.). English was the language software authors most likely spoke; English is the language of programming and software industry. English is the language almost all software targets first and foremost, due to market/user population size. As a consequence, most care is put into English in the user interface, it's the one considered canonical, it's the one in which the thing was designed (whether the desigers were native English speakers or not); English is the one where user-facing text is most likely to be consistent and corresponding 1:1 with language used in other programs, as well as with code powering it, etc. Every other language is a translation, most likely done as an afterthought, as cheaply and quickly as possible (there's little incentives to do otherwise - as long as English text is done well, users will manage). If you understand English, running software in anything but English is setting yourself up for failure.
- keybored 2y ago
  Scandinavians have small language bases, speak a Germanic language, and don’t have to learn a second non-English language, c.f. the Swiss for example.[1] Both the lack of material in their own languages plus the shared English lexicon and I guess grammar helps motivate them to become at least bilingual (in my experience not more than that for the most part). Similar tendencies can be seen in other European areas. But it seems to be less pronounced as you move outside of the Germanic-speaking parts of Northern Europe. You don’t have to move far away from the Germanic-speaking Northern Europe to find adults who struggle with English. Including young adults. Now this is apparently for kids. Certainly kids younger than teenagers have amazing language acquisition abilities. But they also might have less motivation and exposure to English. Now maybe Northern Europe kids have such exposure these days that the current English-dominated programming as we all know it is a mere triviality for them. So scratch those. Not for them. I would still be surprised if there aren’t a large number of kids worldwide that localized programming would help. [1] Minorities like the Sami could be exceptions here.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> (That is not the case in many other places.) Practical angle: so let's add another datapoint! The same is the case in Poland. Seriously though, it's just a consequence of history. Computers and software were imported to everywhere around the world rapidly; no country wanted to put themselves at economic disadvantage by blocking sales of hardware and software until they 100% up to specs regarding consumer products being fully explained and operable in native language (in fact, I suspect such regulations came about after computers became a thing in any given place). > Since (my reason at least) is that I can troubleshoot problems using the English Internet corpus. And I don’t need to bother with multiple terms. For me it's more of the latter. Translations love to screw terminology up, introducing multiple distinct terms for the same abstract concept, and using them inconsistently (often the result of multiple, independent, half-assed passes at translating the user-facing text, manuals, etc.). English was the language software authors most likely spoke; English is the language of programming and software industry. English is the language almost all software targets first and foremost, due to market/user population size. As a consequence, most care is put into English in the user interface, it's the one considered canonical, it's the one in which the thing was designed (whether the desigers were native English speakers or not); English is the one where user-facing text is most likely to be consistent and corresponding 1:1 with language used in other programs, as well as with code powering it, etc. Every other language is a translation, most likely done as an afterthought, as cheaply and quickly as possible (there's little incentives to do otherwise - as long as English text is done well, users will manage). If you understand English, running software in anything but English is setting yourself up for failure.

keybored 2y ago
Scandinavians have small language bases, speak a Germanic language, and don’t have to learn a second non-English language, c.f. the Swiss for example.[1] Both the lack of material in their own languages plus the shared English lexicon and I guess grammar helps motivate them to become at least bilingual (in my experience not more than that for the most part). Similar tendencies can be seen in other European areas. But it seems to be less pronounced as you move outside of the Germanic-speaking parts of Northern Europe. You don’t have to move far away from the Germanic-speaking Northern Europe to find adults who struggle with English. Including young adults. Now this is apparently for kids. Certainly kids younger than teenagers have amazing language acquisition abilities. But they also might have less motivation and exposure to English. Now maybe Northern Europe kids have such exposure these days that the current English-dominated programming as we all know it is a mere triviality for them. So scratch those. Not for them. I would still be surprised if there aren’t a large number of kids worldwide that localized programming would help. [1] Minorities like the Sami could be exceptions here.