iTunes language choices
iTunes language choices
Originally uploaded by Brock.
I mean. What the hell is this all about? This is not an iTunes rant, this is an "All software written with language options, particularly the american ones" rant. Why do american software designers feel the need to add the country of origin in situations like this?
"English (United States)"
What? I mean, I can understand if there was proper English on there too - it allows people like me to avoid having to tolerate stupid fucking spelling and words with half the fucking letters missed out ('favorite' and 'color' spring to mind), but when it is the only option? Surely it's just 'English'. Or are people from the united states so stupid that unless you tell them what country they are from, they don't know what their language is called?
But that is a minor niggle compared to what I find really mind-fucking-bendingly pointless:
French (France)
German (Germany)
Italian (Italy)
Why the fuck does 'French' need the clarification "France" after it? What the fuck? For a start, if someone who speaks french is looking for a language option to allow them to use the software properly, then call it "Francais". After all, that's its fucking name! Every french person looking at that list would need to know what their language is in English to know which one was their language! And surely "German" wouldn't need to be clarified by adding "Germany" after it if it was displayed as "Deutsch", would it? No! Because it would then make sense to them. What with being written in Deutsch and all that. Fucking retards.
Is it just me, or is that astronomically fucking dumb? Just use the proper bloody names!
Why does the language list have to be written in English? Why do English people need to understand what the other languages are to be on that list? Why? Why isn't the list of the languages in their own form? i.e., Deutsch/Francais/Italiano etc.. If you don't understand that much, then chances are it ain't the bloody language for you, is it?
What possible explanation is there for this ridiculous habit? It is everywhere, and it drives me mad. I find it irritating enough that we have our own language names for perfectly pronounceable places - Why the french call London "Londres" is beyond me, but we're no better because we don't use "Roma" (Rome) or "Firenza" (Florence) even though they fit perfectly well with our own language and pronunciation. I can understand doing it in Welsh, Chinese, Russian and the other more obscurely spelt languages or those with different alphabets, but to change the name of the language itself is just utterly pointless.
posted by Brock @ Thursday, April 13, 2006
10 Comments:
grim: The Germans know exactly how to spell Cologne.
It's spelt: Köln
If your not blessed with the ability to find the "ö" character then it is spelt: Koeln.
Similar rules apply for
München & Muenchen.
Whilst I'm still here.
The only good reason I can think of for all the language names being written in English is to prevent some low-life changing your menus to Russian or something whereupon you are left with an electronic device of which you know not how to operate.
That doesn't work though, does it? If the language was always written in its true form, it would always say "English" regardless of whether you were looking at it on a Mandarin/Cyrillic/french/Guatemalan machine, German would always say "Deutsch", etc.
There would never be a need to translate the language to that of the machine - the problem is that people would need all the menu choices translated to get to the language selection screen, so that they coudl recognise their own language when it is written in that language.
Good point, well made.
As for the many names for 1 city thing. Have a look at this site:
http://colognega.ags.myareaguide.com/?cityguide=history
umm. because there are at least 4 "germans" that i know of, and 2 "italians" and 2 "spanish"es, and i think there are around 4 "french"es tho i'm less sure of the last.
you will often see, for example, on french tv, french people speaking french but being subtitled.
the English(US) thing is because there are technically localisation differences b/w that and English(UK), English(Aust.), and English(International).
what they've done is basically get the localisation done for the country's main language, then stopped at that point. presumably, if a country kicks up enough fuss, they'll add the other "languages" for that country.
oh, and "Cologne" is the french spelling of "Köln", and BOTH are correct. that part of germany is actually baden-württemburg, and like the alsace is as much french as it is german. england most likely adopted the french spelling as normal since a) most english people think there's something cool about sounding frenchish b) if read in english-style pronunciation, it fits normal english "rhythms"/meters much better than the german one does (the french say "cologne" extremely different from how the english say it. similarly, saying "londra" in english sounds nothing like "london", but in an italian's mouth it's almost the same)
None of the multiple languages/sub-languages that there are matters, though, because for all the German language alternatives that there may or may not be, I'd wager they are all called "Deutsch" (or at the very least will understand it instantly), but regardless, it can hardly help clarify it to a German speaker to have it written in English, can it? £100 says that sure as shit none of them are called "German" by anyone other than us, are they?
And there is one 'Italian' in it's formally recognised form (Internationally, and by Italians). It is a very formal language. There are, however, 14 regional dialects (none of which share much in common with Italian itself) and the same applies - It's always called "Italiano" in the dialects, too, not "Italian".
But, again, this isn't changing the fundamental point that if people don't recognise the name of a language in the form of that language's own tongue, chances are they don't speak it. Labelling it in English will make not one chuff of difference and is in no way helpful other than to the casual observer who cannot speak that language. It is ridiculous that the only person that will not know what "Deutsch" means will be someone who can't speak any form of German.
So why do they NEED to understand what it says?
you're going to like this...
it is Standard to present Other Languages' Names in the Current Language's representation.
yeah, all your objections apply. and are valid. but remember, this standard was mostly driven by americans, who (i have bitter experience of this) frighteningly often can't understand why even Dates shouldn't be expressed in english (and in MMM DD YY form).
(memories of trying to hammer home to the Silicon Valley devel team WHY it's better to store dates in a universal (& non-text) format. e.g. "Germans spell "May" "Mai" -- response "that's just stupid" -- i shit you not)
Exactly my main irritation. americans have driven this ridiculous 'standard' by sheer force of numbers of stupid people.
This should NOT be tolerated. If we allow this to continue, we will be forced to the lowest common (american) denominator.
*shudders*
I wake up in a cold sweat at the thought, to be honest.
The reason why Cologne is spelt that way in English is not because the English like to sound French but rather because French WAS the court language of England for a very long time and well into the 20th century French was the worldwide common language of diplomacy as well, spoken universally by all diplomats as a common language.
Why? Tradition one suspects.
Of course American english is trying to take over the world, its worse down under where even our newspapers and TV stations seemingly adopt american spellings and pronounciations for words - god save me but its fucking colour NOT color, specialise not specialize and any one of a million other damn things.
PS brock - not stalking, saw the screenshot and had to read the blog post - spot on mate !
but stalking brock is fun
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