Re: Localized org-mode

["Göktuğ Kayaalp" <self@gkayaalp.com>]

On 2018-05-09 21:43 +09, Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On May 9, 2018, at 21:07, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, May 9, 2018, 8:01 AM Diego Zamboni <diego@zzamboni.org
>> <mailto:diego@zzamboni.org>> wrote:
>> I really don't see the point of trying to localize org keywords. To
>> me, they are like the keywords in any programming language - part of
>> the language. Would you consider translating C or LISP keywords?
>
> There are no practical reasons why that should not be possible. The
> current state of affairs is only due to design constraints when the
> languages were conceived.
>
> In Scheme, for ex. you can actually redefine all the language keywords
> very easily without any impact on the interpreter.

Practical reason: communication.  I'm a Turkish speaker, suppose I'm
monolingual, and I have a problem with the function
‘güncel-devamla-çağır’ in Scheme.  I'd find a fraction of the results if
I was searching for ‘call-with-current-continuation’.  As the small
community of programmers (and the even smaller community of Emacsers
(and as the smaller community of the Org-mode-ers/some-proglang-users
(and as the even smaller community of Org-mode/some-proglang-users users
of some X language as the mother tongue))), we need to communicate, and
we need as much information at our disposal as possible.

The language of programming is English.  I'm completely fine with it.
Being a programmer and not knowing any English has so many disadvantages
that learning it is worthwhile regardless of how much time you've put
into it.  The language of the computers is English too.  Most often,
most software is written in English (even by many non-native speakers)
and maybe translated after the fact, where most of the time (if not all)
the results are sub-par or at most 8/10 (maybe because many terms are
invented in English and require inventing words in other languages which
always sound off).

Furthermore, in the context of this thread, Org allows drawers with
arbitrary names to be defined (e.g. I have :remotes:\n...\n:end: or
:NEXT:\n...\n:END: in a file), with a couple names like :PROPERTIES: and
:LOGBOOK: reserved.  This means that you can't reliably know if anybody
has :PROPRIÉTÉS: or :PROPRIETÀ:, which renders translations impossible.
Same thing with todo keywords, tags, etc.

>> In addition to the trouble of supporting something like this within
>> Emacs, think of the growing ecosystem of tools which support org
>> mode - they would all need to be aware of these localizations. It
>> would be a nightmare to maintain.
>
> Localization, when properly done is never a nightmare to maintain.

I appreciate your efforts on i18n and l10n on Emacs, but unfortunately I
am yet to find a properly localised piece of software, especially in the
FOSS community.  Also, when I need help online, I need the English
messages anyways (and translated manuals, if they ever exist, are a joke
all the time).


-- 
İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp	<https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
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