[comp.edu] Non-English speaking programming

sakkinen@tukki.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) (02/01/90)

In article <4977@drutx.ATT.COM> mcp@drutx.ATT.COM (Mike Paugh) writes:
> ...
>The question: In non-English speaking countries is it necessary for
>programmers to learn English to write in languages such as Pascal, 
>COBOL, FORTRAN, etc.? Are there versions of these languages in 
>Spanish, French, German, Japanese...? If not, what are the favored
>languages in non-English speaking countries?

The number of fixed keywords in a programming language is usually
so small that it isn't much of an issue. Hardly any other language
than Cobol (as far as I know) tries to make its statement structure
similar to English. However, I have heard that the University of Oulu
built a version of Logo with Finnish keywords, for use in primary
and secondary schools.

There are even some advantages in that the keywords of a programming
language are not taken from a programmer's native language.
At least it means less restrictions in choosing meaningful identifiers.

In several languages, there are actually much more "keywords"
in various libraries more or less closely coupled to the language proper.
This holds especially for such object-oriented languages as Smalltalk-80
(TM), in which the boundary between the core language and the class
library is rather diffuse. It would be perhaps useful but surely
hard to realise, to make all this vocabulary multilingual.

There could be real benefits from having compiler error messages
and things like that available in several languages.
Unfortunately, such facilities are rare so far.
The Native Language System (?, the acronym is certainly NLS)
of the X/Open consortium is an effort in this direction.

Markku Sakkinen
Department of Computer Science
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
Seminaarinkatu 15
SF-40100 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland

bjornmu@idt.unit.no (Bj|rn Munch) (02/01/90)

In article <5850004@hplsla.HP.COM>, billh@hplsla.HP.COM (Bill Harris) writes:
> I asked a similar question about 6 months ago in this group and was
> surprised at the answers I got.  I will summarize them here.
>
> (skipped)
> 
> *****
> I read about a Norwegian Logo once ;-)  Hmm...contact AFNOR, the French
> standards body (try the French embassy/consulate for an addr.). They've done
> a French Pascal and I believe they will do a French Modula as well.
> 
> Frode L. Odegard, Modula-2 CASE Systems, Maridalsveien 139, N-0461
> OSLO 4, NORWAY. Email: frode@m2cs.uu.no.
> 
> *****

Commodore Norway had a Norwegian Logo (N-Logo) for the Commodore 64.
There were even two versions: one that used the Nordic special
characters, one that didn't (most users hadn't installed the Norwegian
character set).  It was quite popular.

If I remember correctly (I was working in tech.support at Commodore),
the Norwegian version was created by editing the keywords and error
messages in the "standard" version, possibly with a disk editor or
similar.  I had to use a disk editor myself, when I wrote a
transaltion table to/from standard Logo.


Bj|rn Munch    ("The Man With a Pipe in His Name")  bjornmu@idt.unit.no
===========

root@neon.UUCP (Thomas Ziemer) (02/05/90)

mcp@drutx.ATT.COM (Mike Paugh) writes:

> The question: In non-English speaking countries is it necessary for
> programmers to learn English to write in languages such as Pascal, 
> COBOL, FORTRAN, etc.?

Hello Mike !

No, I think it's not necessary, because you only have a limited
number of words. These words you have to associate with a special
meaning (in your programming language) like  'write("xxx");'  or
'printf("xxx");'  with 'printing something onto your screen'.
You mustn't know the mean of any of these words in the english
language. My opinion is, it's not bad, if you *would* learn the
english meaning of the words, but it's not necessary...


> Are there versions of these languages in Spanish, French, German,
> Japanese...? If not, what are the favored languages in non-English
> speaking countries?

No, it doesn't exist any german versions of Pascal, Fortran...
So, we must take, what you give us  ;-)  No, I think, it's very
difficult to translate a given programming language in another
language, because you often loose the existing semantic between
the programming command and the original word (this is an argument
for learning english !). Several tries were made to translate
programming languages to german but only with amusing results.

Greetings ... thomas
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