Re: [PATCH] Chinese Language Maintainer

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On 07/15/2007 08:12 PM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

Li Yang wrote:

I think you worried too much about this problem. :) Let me explain the
situation here in China more clearly. Actually, English is mandatory in
most schools and universities. Only very few people learn other
language as a second language. Therefore software developers who are
almost educated should have the basic English skill. However, that
doesn't mean that they can read English or communicate with native
English speaker very easily. Consider your second language learn in
school for analogy

Actually, I disagree.  English *is* the second language learned in school
for most European developers (except, obviously, the ones from the
British isles), and we don't have that problem.

There is somewhat of a difference though: English and both our native languages are very much related. English, Dutch (my native language) and Swedish (yours) are all Germanic languages -- English and Dutch both West Germanic and Swedish only slightly farther removed as North Germanic. Word for word translations not _too_ infrequently actually make okay or at least understandable Dutch...

Other than Germanic, the Slavic (Polish, Czech, Russian, ...) and Latin (Italian, Spanish, French, ...) language families are two other direct Indo-European descendants that are fairly well represented in the kernel community but I believe it's a largely unsurprising observation that members of both these families have a somewhat harder time adopting English. And Chinese is not even Indo-European...

However -- in Europe I notice culture might be even more important than school _or_ language family is and as such I believe the above argument isn't all that important anyway. English is the second language we learn in school here in the Netherlands but it's much more popular than say German, a language even closer to Dutch, due to us having heard English basically from the time we're old enough to hear music and watch TV. Most _Dutch_ bands sing in English and the ones that don't are for a part targetting the elderly and/or mentally handicapped...

German is close enough to Dutch (and English itself) to rule out most differences related to native language, but in Germany a significantly smaller percentage of people speaks English well enough to be comfortable with it than in the Netherlands simply due to them producing more of their own culture. It's a larger language zone to market to and they dub the remaining English-language content on TV. Over here in the Netherlands we sub-title.

France is another good example. While a bit farther removed from English family-wise, English has had lots of influences from French as well and in any case, learning English shouldn't be harder for a Frenchman than learning French is for a Dutchman (we are, or were when I was there, taught French in school as well) which is to say not very hard. Yet, mastery of English is extremely poor in France. Not as a coincedence, most _all_ of the French culture is in the French language including dubbed originally English songs for example.

Both the German and, slower, French examples get less true with every new generation, but both still hold...

Popular culture in the sense of music, tv and these days very much games is something you start to experience at a very young age, years younger than the Chinese will be taught English in school and age is extremely important in mastering a language -- the human brain is by far best at it at the time you start mastering your native language (in fact, this is what defines "native") and every single year after that makes it harder.

That is -- let's just solve our Chinese translation problem by overthrowing the Chinese government and forcing the sub-titled Harry Potter film-series down the throat of the population... |-/

Seriously, I only wanted to say that both language family and (import of) culture are very important and as such, concentrating on schooling alone might not be all that sensible. I did not want to say that I feel that all these translations make a great deal of sense. Some of us have an easier time learning English than others do, the Chinese probably don't have an easy time at all, but a single common language is still the thing to aim for. The subset and semblance of English spoken on this list seems like something that should serve well as that common language, especially given the _help_ English language education gives in it. Also, I hear China is in fact fairly rapidly opening up to Western (American) popular culture which might be an argument if you have a generation or two to spare...

Apologies for ranting...

Cheers,
Rene.

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