Re: Multilingual conversion - Ideas ?


"James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:s36hf.587295$1i.423315@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Recently bought a package of noodles made in Taiwan. So for us Canucks the
> label was bilingual - and like so many 'Anglos' having learned French at
> school in UK never pursued it. In total have spent 6 hours in France -
> fifty years ago. So given a set of instructions in both English and
> French, I'd guarantee that the directions didn't match. With a little bit
> of fractured English going on for starters, something like "Put to the pot
> boil".

I've been in restaurants where the menus were poorly translates so that
French speaking people had a different set of choices than English speaking.

French (translated): "Choose between string beans OR rice, and between soup
OR salad."
English : "Choose any two of the following: string beans, rice, soup, salad,
potato."

Not only did we (I consider myself to be more English than French) have
far more flexibility in our choice of side dishes, we also had the
opportunity to have potato, which the French apparently weren't allowed to
choose.


> I think the Acadamie Francaise is on a losing battle trying to cut out all
> the anglicisms, like le striptease, and didn't they have le weekend in
> France ?

I think the AF is having the most problem with technological terms.
It'll usually be a few months or years between when a term is invented (e.g.
"peer to peer") in English, and when the AF gets around to coming up with a
French translation. By the time they do, everyone (including the French)
have already got the English term firmly ingrained in their mind that the
French terms sound ridiculous.

As I mentioned, if you say "weekend" to a person from France, they'll
probably be able to guess what you mean, but AFAIK the preferred term there
is "fin de semain".

> Why I went looking I don't know - but browsed comp.java.help and see you
> dispensing advice. So care to give me some input on Java Factory - I'll
> post as a separate topic later as "OO Factory".

Sure. I'm assuming this question is about the Factory design pattern
from the Gang of Four.

- Oliver


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