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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:The Joy of Lex
Notice:A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:THEBAY::SYSTEM
Created:Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1192
Total number of notes:42769

830.0. "Computer language languages" by XANADU::RECKARD (Jon Reckard, 381-0878, ZKO3-2/T63) Mon Sep 24 1990 14:24

    Since JOYOFLEX's readership seems to be polyglotted (and don't mind
    someone inventing words) and since I can be relatively in cognito here,
    I'll ask these questions knowing that I'll likely receive more-or-less
    authoritative answers and won't be (very) ashamed that I don't know the
    answers myself, my provincial self.

    Is DCL (American)English only?  What's French for "RUN" or "GOTO" or
    "BACKUP" or "SET or "SHOW" or "DELETE" etc etc and "DCL" even?

    What about BASIC?  What's German for "BASIC" and "GOSUB" and "LET" and
    "RANDOMIZE" etc etc?

    What about "C" and "malloc" and "printf" and "getchar" and "strcpy"?

    And ForTran, and Pascal, etc etc etc?

    Are there as many C compilers (or, at least, the parsing/translating
    parts of them) as there are foreign languages using C?
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830.1PRSSOS::MAILLARDDenis MAILLARDMon Sep 24 1990 14:344
    As far as French is concerned, most French programmers, if not all, use
    the English words. And the LOLA (for LOcal LAnguage) product is not
    supported anymore since VMS V4.0.
    			Denis.
830.2TKOV51::DIAMONDThis note is illegal tender.Tue Sep 25 1990 06:4911
    For a while, there were compilers for programming languages with
    keywords chosen from other languages.  But people don't do that
    any more.  Modern implementations tend to have a single set of
    keywords, which are generally based on English and not translated.
    (As a Digital employee who is not in the corporate standards
    department, I have been forbidden to mention the actual reason
    why implementations tend towards, uhm, being, er...)
    
    In VMS operating system 5.3, we have the "set language" command
    for English or Japanese.  However, All-In-1 programs ignore the
    setting and always display their messages in Japanese.
830.3I thought 'grep' was French anyway?PASTIS::MONAHANhumanity is a trojan horseThu Sep 27 1990 16:5924
    	There is certainly a French-Canadian version of Focal. You might
    get details in MSDSWS::FOCAL_LANGUAGE. The Atari PC we have at home
    works only in French, though that is a menu system rather than a
    command language. For some languages it might be unacceptable to start
    a command with the verb, but this would not worry a menu system.
    
    	I have heard of French versions of both Cobol and Basic, and the
    French have their own terms for most computer terminology. You *must*
    use them in all government tenders - otherwise it means automatic
    rejection, even if you know the person reading the tender is familiar
    with the English terms.
    
    	A Swede once told me that there was an attempt to the same sort of
    thing in Sweden, and that the proposed Swedish terms for long-term and
    short-term storage translated back as "horse-memory" and
    "chicken-memory", but he might have been pulling my leg.
    
    	Une Taupe dans l'Ordinateur de l'�cole Polytechnique
    	----------------------------------------------------
    Une fois le dialogue �tabli avec l'ordinateur frontal - quelques
    chiffres � composer sur le cadran - le pirate a-t-il tent� de p�n�trer
    dans l'un des "cerveaux" du "Cray One"?
    
    (quote from newspaper article in front of me)
830.4VOGON::BALLHave you got a licence for that pun?Fri Sep 28 1990 19:4019
99.73%� of programmers worldwide use American English versions of languages.

Products for the other 0.27% have included some British micros including the 
Acorn BBC Micro with a COLOUR command.  When Acorn attempted to sell it in the 
States they wrote a new ROM with a COLOR command...

A version of BASIC for the Welsh-built Dragon home computer was produced with 
Welsh keywords by a third party.

Jon








�Plausable sounding made-up statistic.
830.5user-friendlyERICG::ERICGEric GoldsteinSun Oct 21 1990 09:526
.2>    In VMS operating system 5.3, we have the "set language" command
.2>    for English or Japanese.  However, All-In-1 programs ignore the
.2>    setting and always display their messages in Japanese.

That must make life interesting for All-In-1 users outside Japan, most of whom
don't know Japanese.