Re: Wasteful internationalization (Was: Structured exception information)

["Alex R. Mosteo" <devnull@mailinator.com>]

Randy Brukardt wrote:

> "Alex R. Mosteo" <devnull@mailinator.com> wrote in message
> news:51p83bF1k9di7U1@mid.individual.net...
>> Randy Brukardt wrote:
>>
>> > Umm, even I (who think internationalization is a total waste of effort)
>>
>> I'm curious about this, could you elaborate a bit? Surely
>> internationalization is a reality; in what sense you consider it a total
>> waste?
> 
> Dmitry answered this better than I could: just because it is "reality"
> doesn't make it right. 

Until some global language gets truly prevalent, I'm afraid i18n will not be
a waste. It's a need, perhaps expensive and difficult to get right, even if
enjoying original works is much better for the fortunate that can do that.
I agree with Bj�rn that we shouldn't equate the fault of bad translators
with total waste.

(I see this is a matter of perspective, I suppose, and how you value proper
translations).

> There are many such examples: you could start with 
> the current US president. ;-)

> It depends on the application, of course, but for many things (like
> compiler error messages), attempts to localize just make things more
> confusing. Most important stuff in the world is in English these days --
> that's the reality, and forcing localization of that is counterproductive.

Ah, forced localization... I live very near of Catalonia... Yes, I'd like
nobody needed translations. But I'm not disagreeing with the issue of
unneeded but imposed translations.

It's difficult not to agree with the compiler example. Compiler errors are
certainly bothersome for me in Spanish, but because they're badly
translated and they difficult searches in google. An even worse example is
Excel, whose formulae are translated in Spanish versions! So you have
both "IF(;;)" and "SI(;;)" and so on, and both are accepted by the formula
engine. This is just mental.

> There clearly are exceptions: if you want to sell a word processor in
> Japan, it probably has to handle their funny character set. Which is why I
> said IF Internationalization is a requirement (hopefully it is not, but
> you don't always get what you want).

I reckon the problem lies more in the infrastructure needed for multiple
translations being supported than in the character sets per se. Unicode has
eased this pain very much. Curiously, one could argue that having to remove
the actual strings from the places where they're needed is a good isolation
practice. I'm not sure what's your opinion on this; for me certainly is a
lost battle to laziness. But then, I don't do i18n in my programs.