On Saturday 19 May 2007 02:24:04 Djihed Afifi wrote: > > I did study these subjects in both English and Arabic, Arabic > > abbreviations never sounded good, neither to me, nor to my friends. > > Perhaps it's because you studied both terms, that sounds assisine, and > it could be the cause for you hating one and prefering the other. We > studied the arabic abbreviations *only*, and we never had any problems > with them. We never had a problem saying م م أ for معلم متعامد و > متجانس. After a while, you get used to it, I know we did nearly sing > them. > > I know plenty of friends who studied Maths that style and came to the > west and always had the advantages in Maths courses at uni (but that's > also probably because maths standards in the west are slipping) > No, actually, we studied in Arabic first then in English, and even when we studied using Arabic abbreviations we used to write the abbreviations but we never read it, when we used to read an Arabic abbreviation we used to say the full form. This brings us to a very important issue, in Arabic, we can have abbreviations but we cannot have acronyms. > > There was a time that I was like you, interested in creating Arabic > > abbreviations but then I realized that none will use them. > > That isn't a problem with the notion of Arabic abbreviations > themselves, that's strictly a problem of people not recognising you as > an authority to issue abbreviations. Consensus on things like the > Technical Dictionary help, though admittedly it is not enough, it will > always needs big pushes from the .gov's and educational authorities. > OK, how many people are we? We're not more that 20 persons, what can we do? We won't be able to change a lot of people. > > Let me ask you a question, would you really use these abbreviations when > > talking with your friends? would you really ask your friend "كم ال ذ.د.ع. > > تبعك؟"? would you really do? > > I prefer the arabic abbreviations, I always did. Again, beware of the > illusion: because you studied it that way and because you use it that > way daily doesn't mean everybody does. > You didn't answer my question, would you really ask your friends that question? Assuming you did and your friend asked what it means and you told him the full form, there's a chance of only 20% that he will actually start using that abbreviation with his friends. > > Since we're talking about this, since ever, Arabs want an Arabic > > programming language, I read about that all the time in forums, but I > > never see Dutch people, for example, asking for a Dutch programming > > language. > > Please stick to user interfaces. User interfaces and programming > languages are two different beasts. the former are laregly used by > relatively more educated developers, the latter are for the wide > ranging audience in the arab world. > > And for the record, you might want to check out French, Dutch, > Spanish, do they use English abreviations as well? hint: they don't - > unless absolutly necessary and absurdly wrong to do otherwise. > > But your question itself is close to meaningless when you consider the > differences between English and Dutch on the one side, and English and > Arabic on the other side. The first use more or less the same aphabet, > English and Arabic use different scripts and are opposite in > direction. Which further sets the case for Arabised abbreviations. > > At least "Arabised" abbreviations in that they should use the Arabic > script (possibly transliteration can be acceptable, and that's to be > discussed). But to allow for RTL script and LTR script in user > interfaces is just shear lunacy. > Let me quote from a how-to that I really like and it is the reason why I decided to use Linux and contribute to KDE. "Back around 1991 I learned that many hackers who have English as a second language use it in technical discussions even when they share a birth tongue; it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job. For similar reasons, translations of technical books written in English are often unsatisfactory (when they get done at all). Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of developers for Linux. It's an example worth following." You get the idea! > > Why do Arabs want to beat the west? Why don't they just join forces > > together? for example, instead of creating an Arabic Perl, we can help > > developing the English one. > > Sure, but that's non-sequitur. UI's and Perl are different things. > > Perhaps I should rehearse the question again, would you use the > English or French abbreviations? because, you know, not everybody's > second language in the Arabic world is English. Not only that, not > everybody has a second language AT ALL besides Arabic (practically). > That is exactly my point, you don't have to have English as your second language to use these abbreviations, English abbreviations should be used everywhere. You see, the word Television, Arabs first translated it as رائي, when no one used it they translated it to تلفاز, and nowadays, everyone uses تلفزيون. > Regards, > > Djihed > I think I'm the only one here who is agains Arabic abbreviations, the thing is that I'm not against having Arabic abbreviations, it's just that I know none will use them and creating them will be a waste of time and effort that we could spend on translating software instead. Cheers, Laith Juwaidah > > _______________________________________________ > > Doc mailing list > > Doc at arabeyes dot org > > http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/doc > > _______________________________________________ > Doc mailing list > Doc at arabeyes dot org > http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/doc
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