i18n – what a mistake-a to make-a!
Aril 29, 2012
I’m an average Belgian citizen, usually having a moderate opinion on things. However, when it comes to choosing a computer keyboard or the installation language of my OS, I’m a true extremist. Please, allow me to tell you about my conviction.
Do you have any final request?
When interviewing for my current job, I was asked very near the end of the interview: “Do you have any specific requests?”. It could have been a question posed to a convict in death row, but knowing my boss the way I know him now, it was an honest and open question.
Many interviewees probably would have asked for an office with a window, a company car, or some special benefits package. Not me. I just asked to be allowed a computer with a US-QWERTY keyboard and an OS without a Dutch language pack, such that my software would run in its native English language. Actually, I’m oversimplifying my request a bit, as I also asked for a dual boot system that would also allow me to run GNU/Linux next to the company standard Microsoft OS. But for now, let’s focus on the i18n-related stuff.
My boss-to-be frowned upon me. Admitting that a long time ago he also used a QWERTY keyboard, he asked why I still lived in ancient times: “We have Belgian AZERTY keyboards now, you know?”
A bit of personal history
Before going to the university to get a Master’s and PhD in Engineering, I studied at a small university college, the very same university college that is one of the predecessors of the University Faculty I am part of right now. The boss I was talking about earlier, is my current boss, one of the two co-Deans.
When I graduated from the university college, back in 1994, the compilers, CAD and EDA software ran on Unix (HP-UX and SUN OS4) workstations, all having QWERTY keyboards; the Math and Physics professors used LaTeX to typeset their course texts and GNU/Linux was just starting to reach a broad (technical) public. Since then, I spent some time at the university (to get my Master’s and PhD degree), co-started a spin-off, and during all those 12 years my working environment did not change: GNU/Linux/UNIX, QWERTY keyboards, absence of i18n and LaTeX were solid ingredients in my every day job.
And here I was, being interviewed at the very same university college, only to find out that the entire organization shifted from Unix to Windows, from US Qwerty to Belgian Azerty, from English as the standard IT language to a i18n-Dutchified language pack, and from LaTeX to – of all creatures – MS-Word.
Still, I took the job as I was realist enough to know that 90% of all employers fell into the same ‘new fashion’ category. The job was challenging enough to overcome these minor deficiencies.
Language fundamentalism... naah!
As of then, I was challenged many times on my resilience to adopt the AZERTY/Dutch (and Microsoft/Word) way of living. They even pushed me so far one day, that I answered that people’d beter all take English as their first language. I admit, on that point I was terribly wrong. Even more wrong than the AZERTY/Dutch believers. The only difference is, I realize now that I was wrong.
One’s first (native) langauge is so fundamental to one’s being that it even influences the way we think, our perception and our emotions. Our brain is to a large extent programmed in our native language. It’s as simple as that. Therefore, I’m convinced that keeping the different languages (even dialects) alive is a good thing (even a must) for our cultural and intellectual biodiversity. Even more, learning a second (or n-th) language can broaden our intellectual capacity and the way we look at things.
However, i18n and AZERTY keyboards are a serious mistake in IT history.
i18n fundamentalism... yeah!
Where I strongly believe in the necessity to uphold one’s native language, I firmly recommend my engineering students to:
- study English to a level at which they are able to think in the language
- buy US-QWERTY keyboards
- refrain from using language packs
While the reasons for this advice are obvious to me, let me take some time to explain them.
Study English well
Though I love foreign languages (French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (I love the mashy sound of this particular one), Chinese, ...) and my own native language, Dutch, we still face the fact that when not counting all Chinese dialects as one language, English is still language number one spoken around our globe. English gets you around.
Buy a US-QWERTY keyboard
A standardized keyboard saved me a tremendous amount of time when doing my job around the globe. Belgium is one of the few unfortunate countries to have adopted AZERTY-style keyboards. Adapting to different layouts takes time and diminishes my working speed when programming, writing documentation, course texts, administrative documents, even when writing this post.
Imagine all people (that speak a language based on the Latin character set) using the same keyboard. Composing special characters can also be standardized, so writing all these special ëöéèç should pose no real problem. Imagine the amount of time saved searching all these damn special characters on the keyboard you face. I myself, probably spent a month of my life cursing on having hit the huge ‘enter’ key on the AZERTY keyboard that I find in front of me occasionally, when what I actually needed was the backslash key.
Imagine the money saved on writing special drivers, making special chips, and making these different keyboard variants.
The economy would benefit from standardizing the keyboards.
Do we lose any cultural identity by not having our own AZERTY/QWERTZ/QWERTY variant. Hell, no.
Refrain from using language packs
The reason for this is obvious: the majority of information present on the internet (think of fora helping you working around one of the peculiarities in your MS-Windows OS) is in English. If I wanted some help making a Table of Contents in the latest version of MS-Word, I do have the choice of searching for ‘Word Inhoudstafel’ (approx. 37K hits) and ‘Word Table of Contents’ (approx. 53M hits). Guess where the best information can be found? That’s convincing enough for me.
Alas, it’s not for the majority of my coworkers, asking me some help solving their MS-problems. The mere answer ‘I don’t have a File menu, I see ‘bestand, bewerken, ...’, when I ask them to open it, gives me cardiac arrhythmia.
To be honest, you will never find me googling for ‘Table of Contents’, I use LaTeX instead.
Conclusion
In my opinion, i18n is not helping internationalization at all. On the contrary. It’s a waste of money and effort. Let’s start by sticking to US-QWERTY keyboards, a US locale, and... I’m sure you’ll be able to complete this row of sticky things for me.