Re: Internationalization of Lua

[Tim Hill <drtimhill@...>]

On Nov 21, 2016, at 8:27 AM, mathieu stumpf guntz <psychoslave@culture-libre.org> wrote:

Translating a programming language isn't the way to go, but removing any and all references to a specific language and/or culture is.

You can abstract things, but you can't remove any and all references to a specific language and/or culture. Abstracting things is obviously a cultural practice. Now if you want to speak ethnology or even ethology with me, please make that in a private answer. 

I don’t see how an “esperanto” version of Lua helps anyone really. I think it’s important to distinguish between end-user i18n and developer i18n. I’m pretty sure there are no true user-facing strings in Lua, so i18n for the end-user is really a coding and/or string extraction/editing problem (which, to be true, could be made easier with a toolkit).

As far as developers are concerned, how much English is there to learn here? A dozen keywords, a few strings (e.g. for type names), and the occasional error text. And even if you DO create a language neutral base, what about all the Lua rocks? All those third party error/exception strings?

I will also note in passing (though I confess I cannot find the reference via Google) that some time ago some research indicated that users could more easily memorize a list of foreign words for items rather than random glyphs .. so using something like APL style symbols might end up making a LESS useable language.

—Tim