On Saturday, 9 November 2013 at 10:38:52 UTC, Raphaël Jakse wrote:
We surely would get the same kind of reaction for "tranche" in
French. But you are not sure people will understand "slice"
correctly, even if they can be kind of familiar with the word
(e.g. because of the slice method of the Array object in
Javascript). To understand "slice", maybe some people will even
try to translate it.
Slices happen to be bit different in every language. A slice in D
and Ruby does not have the same behavior. Although I could say
the same about classes, but I wouldn't feel the same need to
explain classes.
I think it is just a matter of habit, and your Photoshop
example tend to confirm it.
When you used the word one time and explained it, people will
start to understand you, and as you use it, people will get
used to it and start employ it. Or not, an then it is time to
fall back to the Enligh version of the word. So why being
concerned by trying the native word first? Well, because it is
native and it can help the appropriation of the concept behind
it for people which don't master it. Maybe I'm wrong.
Another example is "e-mail". We do have an official translation
for that, "e-post", which is a direct translation. But most
people use "mail", yes the English word. Which actually is a bit
weird. This is also true for people how don't have any interest
in computers at all, but use computers. What is getting more
common now is also to use a Swedish spelling for "mail", which
would be "mejl".
I'm thinking like this. Many of the words used in computer
science have a meaning outside computer science which existed
long before, i.e. stream, thread and so on. When I'm referring to
the concept from computer science I'm using the English word and
when I refer to the word out side of the computer world I'm using
the Swedish word.
When referring to a stream of water I would use "bäck" which is
the translation of "stream" but I could never, ever use that word
when referring to a stream sending data over the network. The
only reason I could use "bäck" in programming if I was creating a
class for a game which referred to an actual stream of water, but
since I always programming in English I would use "stream" anyway.
Thread on the other I could use the Swedish translation "tråd".
But I would most often use the English word there as well. To me
it adds context. If I would say just "thread" to someone that
knows programming he/she would instantly know I'm talking about
threads in programming. If I on the other hand would just say
"tråd" it could mean something else, like a thread used for
sewing.
For slice, it seems it is a concept to be defined for each
programming language anyway.
It still remains important to give the English word in lessons
to be able to communicate with the rest of the word, and to be
understood by people who already know the English word. Agreed.
Absolutely.
