Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 14:41:37 -0300
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Mat=EDas?= Giovannini <matias@k-bell.com>
To: Benoit Deboursetty <debourse@email.enst.fr>
Subject: Re: Go for ultimate localization!
Uh, I'm going to get flamed by off-topicness, but...
Benoit Deboursetty wrote:
> So, O'CaML handles Latin-1 characters in the identifiers. This
> allows most Europeans, well at least you and me, to use their own
> language; but to me, it has always seemed a bit strange to write a program
> with keywords in English, and identifiers in French. Indeed, I feel
> it's really bogus when I try to read this out loud:
>
> "let élément = String.sub chaîne where chaîne = "...
>
> Do you take the French accent to read this? an English accent? Do you
> switch accents? How do you say "=", "égal" or "equals"? Do you translate
> every word to your mother tongue on-the-fly?
Symbols and numbers in Spanish, "words" (be them identifiers or
keywords) as they are. Accent varies, but normally is Argentinian
English (I can speak acceptable English, with something of an American
English accent).
This I do when reading programs aloud, or when doing mathematics.
For instance
"Let x be a real such that x >= 0"
is for me "Let <<equis>> be a real such that <<equis mayor o igual a cero>>"
Evidently, the linguistic structures I use for words and concepts are
separated. And I had never been misunderstood, and I never misunderstood
anybody doing this sort of things.
I think all this is fascinating ;-}
-- I got your message. I couldn't read it. It was a cryptogram. -- Laurie Anderson
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