Re: Question for European Java users

Hi Rhino,

Rhino wrote:
I've never heard a coversation between German IT professionals but I expect it would go rather like a conversation I heard once between two French-Canadian IT professionals: roughly every second word was recognizably an English word! Something like: "Le blocksize de la dataset est sept-mille kilobytes".

I've never heard a conversation between french IT professionals, but I can bet that a german conversation has even more english words, because in france, there is an explicit attempt to invent new french it-words, which is not the case in Germany (except Stefan Rams attempts ;-).

E.g., AFAIK, the word "computer" is not very common in France - how do they translate it -"calculateur"? - whereas in germany, the word "Computer" is *at least* as common as "Rechner".

Indeed, although my English is not the best, I often cannot say if a paper I read was in German or in English, because most words are in English, anyway.

I expect that most people who do not speak german at all are able to understand a german conversation about it! :-)

"We'll install a software-update and grade up the hardware."
"Wir installieren ein Software-Update und graden die Hardware up."

No problem to say this sentence in German. (Although I admit that you would never *write* "graden ... up" - except in an email...)

In general, use of English words in German seems quite widespread these days. For example, the last time I was in Germany, in 1999, I was quite surprised to see a sign indicating a "Recyclinghof". I would assume that there is a German word that means "recycling", although I don't know what it is,

I do not know either! (I am a native German speaker, if I did not mention yet! ;-)

Let me think... "Werkstoffhof" is a term that is sometimes used, but that does not match the meaning exactly, because a "Werkstoff" can also be a "fresh" resource and does not need to be recycled.

Thinking about it, "Recycling" is a perfect German word!

> but the Germans seem to have adopted the English word and tacked "hof"
on the end to indicate a place where recycling takes place. 

Correct. (Although, ethymologically a "Hof" is a "farm" :-)

> I also saw a
"Second-hand Kleidung" sign (or perhaps it was a different German word at the end; in any case, it was clearly a store for second-hand clothing). 

Yeah, no problem in Germany to mix the languages :-)

You could translate "second-hand" as "Gebraucht" (="has been used already"), but that has a more negative touch than "second hand".

What happens in German GUIs? In a typical program written for a German-speaking user who might not be any kind of IT professional, will the menu bars say "File" and "Help" or will they have something like "Datei" and "Hilfe"?

That is a good question. In applications that are used by "common users" ("Otto-Normal-Verbraucher"), the terms are indeed translated. So, "Datei" is more common than "file" (I think). On the other hand, "online help" will be translated with "Online Hilfe".

But it becomes *very* diffiult when e.g. trying to translate terms of an IDE where terms are used that are not so common like "file". We had a discussion about how to translate "commit" (->CVS) and (IMHO) nobody had any suitable idea.

I speak a bit of German and sometimes make my GUIs multilingual just for the practice of working with Java internationalization and localization techniques. It would be very helpful to know what terms are commonly used in German GUIs. Translations of the words and phrases that I see in a typical GUI, like "File", "Edit", "Send", "Receive", "End", etc. etc., would be very helpful for me as a developer. 

Datei, Edit, Senden, Empfangen, Ende/Beenden. Just ask! :-)

The same applies to French.

Sorry, merci, bon jours, and "a hand full of words" ("eine handvoll Worte") is the only French I know... :-(

I'd also be interested in differences amongst the different varieties of German and French used in different Java locales. For instance, I've discovered via i18n work with dates that Austrians use different names for the months than the Germans do and that French people in Switzerland use "octante" and "nonante" where Parisians would say "quatre-vingts" and "quatre-vingts-dix". I imagine the French Swiss understand the Parisian terms and are clear what they mean when they encounter them; I'm not sure if the Parisians would understand the French-Swiss terms: perhaps they'd understand what was meant but sneer at anyone using them as being primitive.

You do not need to dig so deep: Bavarian can only be understand by Bavarians, no "northern German" (which are all other Germans ;-) is able to understand it! ;-/

Of course, there are many other, "local" words:

Buchse, Pömpel, Pölter, Patz, fiddeln, piddeln, tüddeln, Mudjekeepchen, halver Hahn, epibrieren, ...

Horrido,
Ingo

.

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