Thai technical documentation

[gobbledonk]

Hi Guys,

 

I cant read Thai, so please forgive me if this is a naive question.

 

As we all know, translating any document from one language into another is not simply a matter of converting it word by word and spitting out the result. It occurred to me while I was in China that this must be problematic where technical documentation is concerned, and I am particularly interested in how it is done with programming languages.

 

If you've ever looked at any section of modern code, you'll see a large number of words (and small phrases) which convey the programmers intent : while, do, for, if, switch and so on. Many keywords are abbreviated - even English speakers run into trouble deciphering some of them. When you get into markup languages such as HTML, the technologies' American origins become even more apparent : 'center' instead of 'centre' and so on. Here are two short (and crappy) examples - forgive the lack of indentation:

 

1. C++ - terse

 

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

void func1(char* str);

int main()

{

func1("character string passed\n");

return (system("pause"));

}

 

void func1(char* str)

{

cout << "string value := " << str << endl;

}

 

2. Perl - even more funky symbols

 

print "Default search path \n";

foreach $line(@INC) {

print $line . "\n";

}

print "Module locations \n";

foreach (keys %INC) {

print "$_ = $INC{$_}\n";

}

 

 

As its all just a bitstream underneath, a naive approach to building a Thai version for a given compiler woud be to simply convert each individual word into the Thai script and leave the non-textual symbols intact. Exactly how much sense the result would make to a Thai learning programming escapes me - anyone have any experience in this area ?

 

 

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

Very interesting concept. Not really sure whether or not it makes much difference though. English is not my native tongue either and I had no problem picking up the concepts.

 

Also now learning a new language is fairly easy, since usually the main difference is which words to use. The underlying thought process stays the same.

 

Sanuk!

 

[gobbledonk]

Thanks, KS - the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that you are right - the concepts transcend language. If that were not the case, it would be impossible to teach any notation (music, mathematics etc) without teaching the student the language of the people who pioneered that notation (OK, I'm told that you need to be able to read Arabic to truly understand the Koran, but I'm not prepared to go there..).

[Guest]

I think it's helpful to remember that a computer language such as C++ is a proper language; it has its own grammer, syntax, keywords, symbols, etc., just like a natural language. The fact that the keywords derive from English in many computer languages is simply because English-speakers designed them (or because the designers wanted to maximize universality).

 

The idea of translating individual keywords makes about as much sense as it would in a natural language -- imagine taking a page of technical English text and just translating each word in an English sentence into an equivalent Thai word or Thai transliteration. You might have snippets of something that made sense but in general you just have a mess.

 

If you want a computer language that was more, shall we say, "natively comprehensible?" to non-English speakers, you would have to start from their natural language. For example, English speakers resdily understand the differences among terms like do/while/for/until and so on, whereas in other natural languages, the distinctions would not be precise enough to serve as a basis for computer language, or use of the word as a keyword simply would make no sense to a speaker of that language when taken out of context, etc. There's also issues of word order. In English it makes sense to think "do ... until (condition)" but if you were a Japanese person designing a computer language you would think "(condition) until ... do" etc.

 

Even the symbols aren't universal, different natural languages use different symbols for things like citations, etc.

[markle]

Not exactly sure what your question is, (I have a sneaking suspicion that you don't either, just thinking out loud).

I do know a guy that worked on the first Thai scripts on computers but all Thai computer geeks I've met speak computer languages better than English. There has been an attempt to incorporate Thai into some computing with mixed results. For example Thai for Windows has all the frames and command buttons are in Thai but my GF for instance can't use it because she learnt how to use a computer in English.