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First post, by 133MHz

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After posting on this recent topic on how to pronounce 486 I remembered back when I was learning about computers thanks to magazines and software documentation (and learning English as a result) I had to guess at the pronunciation of many of the words. Most of my guesses were wrong, which led to some slightly awkward situations when doing my first hardware purchases or discussing things with more knowledgeable people. My mother tongue is Spanish (LA) and I've come to realize it's a mess when it comes to computing and technology terms - some words have no Spanish equivalent so they're taken straight from English (either with the same or totally different pronunciations), some do have an equivalent but it's not used (in favor of a shorter or cooler sounding English word), others have an official translation which might be accurate or totally incorrect but widely accepted due to common usage, while acronyms and regional variances are a whole different can of worms. Sometimes official terminology used in documentation or user interfaces doesn't reflect real world everyday usage. Being part of this community of like-minded people from all over the world, I'd love to hear how's the situation in other languages, or similar experiences you might have had learning the jargon. I'll start with what I know:

Computer

In Spanish all nouns have gender, so computer can be translated as computador (male) or computadora (female). Some countries use the male form, others the female form. Spain calls it ordenador (arranger) which sounds really posh to us in Latin America. The abbreviation 'PC' is also used with Spanish pronunciation.

MS Windows avoids all that nonsense by using the very neutral and vague equipo (equipment) to refer to the computer. In fact MS Windows has one of the most neutral and error-free Spanish localizations I've ever seen. Spanish is quite heavy on the honorifics and formalisms, yet Windows' tone is not too formal, but not too casual. The translators really did an amazing job. Windows 8 on the other hand... 😵

This is Windows 9x "It's now safe to turn off your computer" message:
bze9qBT.png
lit. Now [you] can turn off the equipment

Units of measurement

Both bit and byte have official Spanish words (bitio and octeto respectively) but pretty much nobody uses them. Not even Spain.

Hertz is hercio, but only the Spanish call their MHz and GHz megahercios and gigahercios.

Hardware

Printed circuit boards used in computers and expansion cards for them can be called placa (board) and tarjeta (card) interchangeably, leading to things like placa madre/tarjeta madre (motherboard) or placa de sonido/tarjeta de sonido (sound card) being both correct and a matter of regional (or even personal) preference.

Power supplies are known as Fuente de poder (lit. source of power) or just fuente (source). User manuals tend to use fuente de alimentación (lit. source of feeding).
With the proliferation of mobile devices and 'wall wart'/'brick' type power supplies, those are being increasingly just called cargador (charger) regardless of the device having an actual battery to charge.

At least where I live 4-pin Molex connectors have been retroactively named "IDE connectors" with the proliferation of the new style SATA power plug, which adds a whole world of confusion. Also PATA and SATA are pronounced as words instead of spelled out like acronyms, which is kinda funny since pata is Spanish for paw.
"Y-splitters" are called ladrones (thieves) where I live, which once dumbfounded me when I saw the item 'ladrón de IDE' (IDE thief) at a computer store. I had no idea what could that be so I asked them to show me one - turns out it was a simple Molex power splitter.

There's no word for "crimp" (connectors) so we totally bastardize the word into submission by coming up with crimpear (to crimp) or crimpeadora (crimping tool).

Keyboard is teclado (from tecla, piano key) pretty much everywhere.

Pointing devices
Latin America uses the English word for mouse when referring to the computer kind, but Spain uses the native word for the rodent, ratón.
Trackballs and touchpads are called by their English names, but I've also heard the very incorrect "pad mouse" used to refer to a laptop touchpad.

A hub (either the USB or Ethernet variety) is officially called concentrador (concentrator?) and named as such in operating systems, but people use the English word because it's shorter.

Storage
Floppy disks are disquetes and the floppy disk drive is a disquetera, but a generic disk drive is known as unidad de disco (disk unit)
CD-ROM is used and pronounced just like in English, but in some countries it is pronounced 'CD-room'.
Hard disks are called disco duro (hard disk), but Spain used to prefer disco rígido (rigid disk) or disco fijo (fixed disk). Same deal with calling floppies discos flexibles (flexible disks).

USB flash drives... oh boy. There are so many names for those it's like euphemisms for the male reproductive organ, it would span a whole separate article, so I'm commenting on the little bit I know:
Where I live we use the word pendrive, which I guess is analogous to the English 'thumbdrive' (as in based on the rough shape of the device), and as far as I know "pen drive" has been officially accepted into the language.
Other Spanish-speaking countries use similar generic, boring names which are variations on "USB/Flash/portable + disk/memory/key", but one notable exception is Costa Rica, where they're known as llave maya (lit. maya key/mayan key). It's so weird, I think it sounds like an ancient Mayan artifact which is all kinds of awesome for such a mundane piece of hardware. Nobody really knows with certainty where that name came from, the most accepted theories are:

  • The name comes from the security dongles used by the Maya 3D animation software.
  • The name comes from a security package bearing that name presented in a 1997 computing expo in Costa Rica, consisting of software which would lock your PC out upon removal of a physical dongle.
  • The very first USB flash drives which were sold in Costa Rica were branded MAYA by whoever imported them into the country and the name stuck.
  • The Mayan civilization allegedly were familiar with binary arithmetic so it's some sort of historical nod.

Other countries have totally nonsensical names for it, like chubidubi, gli-gli, piripicho (which sound like colorful candy or toys), or they skip all that and straight up call it pene (penis). Yes, really.

Software

File System
Files: Latin America uses archivo, while Spain uses fichero. Windows uses archivo.
Directories: Latin America uses carpeta (folder), while Spain uses directorio (directory). Windows uses carpeta but Unix guys prefer the (more correct) directorio.

Choice prompts
Yes/No (Y/N) is Sí/No (S/N).

Device drivers are officially referred to as controladores de dispositivo (device controllers) but in casual use the English word is preferred.

Kernel and core both map to the same word (núcleo).

Registers (as in CPU registers), the Windows Registry and logs also map to the same word (registro).

Bug and glitch are routinely bastardized just like crimp.

(Firmware/BIOS) flashing, (system) crashing and (device) bricking are also bastardized as flasheo, crasheo and brickeo.

Misc.
Acronyms seem to follow a loose rule of "if it looks pronounceable, say it as a word, otherwise spell it out" and in both cases mangle it a bit for good measure.

  • BIOS is pronounced "Bee-OS" instead of "By-OS".
  • LED (Light Emitting Diode) is pronounced as "lead" (Pb).
  • SCSI and PCMCIA are particularly pernicious.
  • Many people read the DOS (as in MS-DOS) as a word instead of an acronym (dos is Spanish for two) so both 'D-O-S' and 'dos' were accepted in common speech.
  • There are words for overclocking and benchmarking (sobreaceleración [over acceleration] and evaluación comparativa [comparative evaluation] respectively) but they're so long and uncool nobody uses them.

That last point is kind of a problem with Spanish. Many simple words are much longer than their English counterparts, so when user interfaces get localized (especially in embedded devices) things end up really cluttered or chocked full of abbreviations because the long-ass words won't fit the boxes and buttons anymore. This is the reason I tend to prefer the English UI on the stuff I use, with few exceptions (like Windows).

Classical microprocessor naming seems to follow English conventions with Spanish numerals:

  • 8080/8086/8088: ochenta ochenta/ochenta ochenta y seis/ochenta ochenta y ocho (80-80/80-86/80-88)
  • 286/386/486: dos ocho seis/tres ocho seis/cuatro ocho seis (2-8-6/3-8-6/4-8-6)
  • 68000/680xx: sesenta y ocho mil/sesenta y ocho xx (68000/68-xx)
  • 6502/Z80: sesenta y cinco cero dos/zeta ochenta (65-02/Z-80)

That's all I can remember for now. Is your language similar? Got any funny story from your learning years?

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Reply 1 of 16, by RacoonRider

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That is a very detailed insight into computer terminology in Spanish language!

Concerning Russian, there is one problem that makes localization hard to use: some Russian words are much longer than their English equivalents!

Side-by-side comparison:
беспроводное соединение - Wi-Fi connection
аккумулятор - battery
материнская плата - motherboard
отображать - view
центр управления сетями и общим доступом - network and sharing center

Since everything is designed with English in mind, most words do not fit the spaces. This was once true for old computers, when screen resolution and other restrictions did not allow to use many characters, and is now true for cell phones. Ever since I bought Nokia 515 I use the English language as default because Russian translation is hardly perfect and never fits the screen. How do you like "Пропущ. выз." instead of "Missed calls"? Windows 7, however, is well localized, but for minor exceptions, like this one:
23076902ff02.png
The last letter in "Центр управления сетями и общим доступом" did not fit the space and is though missing.

The long words make Control Panel a harder to navigate as well.

The other funny thing which most of the people with mother tongue other than English encounter is that often the localization is so bad that you actually have to guess backward translation to understand the function behind the word.

Reply 2 of 16, by obobskivich

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This is very interesting; thanks for sharing. I will agree on the "USB flash drives" thing even in English - people come up with all manner of weird names for them ("pendrive", "jump drive", and "thumbdrive" are probably the most common that I hear - so that isn't too dissimilar).

A few questions I had, if you don't mind:
Something like "5 gigabytes" would become "5 gigaocteto" and the SI prefix is just slapped right on there? How is that abbreviated?

Is there a linguistic distinction between gibibyte and gigabyte? (or any of the other -ibibyte and -igabyte variations).

What about SCSI terminators or RDRAM C-RIMMs?

Reply 3 of 16, by subhuman@xgtx

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Here in Uruguay it is really common for people to abbreviate Gigabyte as 'gigas'.

SCSI is usually pronounced as in english - in that case, Terminador 'Escasi'/Scuzzy

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Reply 4 of 16, by 133MHz

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RacoonRider wrote:

Concerning Russian, there is one problem that makes localization hard to use: some Russian words are much longer than their English equivalents!

Oh yes, happens a lot in Spanish too, as I addressed near the end of my post. This is especially bad on embedded devices like cell phones (as you said), set top boxes, POS/kiosk systems, etc. I remember seeing information displays where every single word was abbreviated to fit within the available space. Might as well ditch the words and use icons!

RacoonRider wrote:

аккумулятор - battery

That looks a lot like 'accumulator', which in Spanish is an archaic word for battery (acumulador), usually the lead-acid type for cars. It fell from use decades ago but it can still be found in very old books from when electricity was new and wonderful. Modern Spanish uses batería (battery, drum set), pila (lit. pile - single cell, like a AA) or celda (cell, as in part of a sealed battery).

Funny you mention that, last week I saw a really cheaply built Chinese portable amplifier/loudspeaker combo unit (those that play MP3s off USB/SD directly into a giant mono speaker) and it had a door on the side which said 'Acumulador' with the ugliest Chinese non-proportional font ever. Guess the Chinese who made it only had a really ancient Chinese-Spanish dictionary lying around, one where a drum is a type of computer memory. 🤣

RacoonRider wrote:

The other funny thing which most of the people with mother tongue other than English encounter is that often the localization is so bad that you actually have to guess backward translation to understand the function behind the word.

Android phones do that to me every single time! I have no clue what the error messages are trying to say even though it's perfect Spanish, and trying to google them is a nightmare. To make it worse different versions of Android have slightly different translations, which means looking for answers even in Spanish is a huge pain in the ass.

On the same vein I remember reading PC World/PC Magazine as a kid and it was pretty clear they were just translated versions of the English mags, as the translations for the menu options, etc. wouldn't match the ones displayed by your computer's OS, but they were smart enough to put the untranslated terms in parenthesis so you could figure it out (and learn a bit of English in the process).

obobskivich wrote:

TSomething like "5 gigabytes" would become "5 gigaocteto" and the SI prefix is just slapped right on there? How is that abbreviated?

Exactly. In fact as far as I know the French actually use the word octet instead of byte, so 5 gigaoctets gets abbreviated as 5 Go. Look at storage devices for the Canadian market and you'll see lots of "KB/Ko", "MB/Mo", "GB/Go" and "TB/To" to comply with the 'everything in English/French' law they have.

obobskivich wrote:

Is there a linguistic distinction between gibibyte and gigabyte? (or any of the other -ibibyte and -igabyte variations).

Much like in the English-speaking world, nobody uses those in common speech. 😵

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

Here in Uruguay it is really common for people to abbreviate Gigabyte as 'gigas'.

Oh yes, kilos, megas and gigas for everyone! Internet service providers love that ambiguity. 🤑

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

SCSI is usually pronounced as in english

Ever heard someone spell it out? Ese ce ese i 🤣

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Reply 5 of 16, by Stojke

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Quick ones:

SCSI - Skazzy
Computer Micro Processor - Računarski Mikro Procesor
File - Datoteka
Folder - Fascikla ( Only rarely who uses this terminology outside of educated computer users )
Yes / No - Da / Ne
Computer Networking - Računarska Mreža
Download - Preuzmi

And so on.
There is an dumb thing that happened lately, and thats is introduction of Serbian word for Digitalization, and that word is - Ubrojčavanje.
This is dumb because Ubrojčavanje means numbering, and digits are not numbers.

Note | LLSID | "Big boobs are important!"

Reply 6 of 16, by RacoonRider

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Stojke wrote:
Quick ones: […]
Show full quote

Quick ones:

SCSI - Skazzy
Computer Micro Processor - Računarski Mikro Procesor
File - Datoteka
Folder - Fascikla ( Only rarely who uses this terminology outside of educated computer users )
Yes / No - Da / Ne
Computer Networking - Računarska Mreža
Download - Preuzmi

And so on.
There is an dumb thing that happened lately, and thats is introduction of Serbian word for Digitalization, and that word is - Ubrojčavanje.
This is dumb because Ubrojčavanje means numbering, and digits are not numbers.

I love how some Serbian words are recognizable from Russian prespective, yet sound funny and crooked (no offence, I'm sure you know what effect I'm talking about). We say SCSI the same way, Datoteka, although there is no such word in Russian, would supposedly mean "file cabinet", Da and Ne exist, "Да" is universal, while "Не" is a short colloquial version of "Нет".

Reply 7 of 16, by Stojke

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Same here 😁
I used to play CS 1.6 on IgroNet (before it became Convex) and i learned quite some Russian slang terms and understanding of words (some are very similar) 😀
Helped me navigate some cool websites in the past, and today ( Half Life Lab).

Note | LLSID | "Big boobs are important!"

Reply 8 of 16, by subhuman@xgtx

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subhuman@xgtx wrote:

Here in Uruguay it is really common for people to abbreviate Gigabyte as 'gigas'.

133mhz wrote:

Oh yes, kilos, megas and gigas for everyone! Internet service providers love that ambiguity. 🤑

Indeed, I guess some things don't differ too much between Chile and my country 😀

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

SCSI is usually pronounced as in english

Ever heard someone spell it out? Ese ce ese i 🤣

And here when I was younger I thought that was the 'correct' way to say it hahaha

7fbns0.png

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Reply 9 of 16, by RacoonRider

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btw, I know a lot of people who can not read "SCSI" or "PCMCIA" and call them "That sh*t with a letter P" or something like that 😁

Reply 10 of 16, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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Any Indonesian knows joystick means the control stick you're using to play games, but when literally translated to Bahasa Indonesia, it's translated to "batang bahagia", which means "stick of joy" or "stick of happiness" - and suddenly the cigar stops being a cigar.

That's why we don't translate the word "joystick", by the way, probably the same reason why we don't literally translate "plug and play" either.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 11 of 16, by tayyare

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Computer: Bilgisayar
CPU: Islemci
RAM: Bellek
Motherboard: Anakart
Display adapter: Ekran Karti
Hard Disk: Sabit Disk (literal translation: constant/non-removable disk)
Floppy: Disket
Floppy Frive: Disket Sürücü
Display: Ekran
Network: Ag (soft g actually)
Plug and Play: Tak Calistir (c with cedilla, s with cedilla, dotless small i) "plug and make it work" literal translation
Keyboard: Klavye
Laptop: Dizüstü
Mouse: Fare
Folder:Klasör
Joystick: Eglence Cubugu (with soft g's) literal translation: "stick of fun" but not in use much, most say joystick anyways..😀
Download: Indirme
USB Flash Drive: Flas Bellek or just "flas" (s with cedilla)
SCSI: computer literate: scuzzy, common joe: secesei 🤣

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Reply 12 of 16, by vetz

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While I understand why people with less english skills use Windows and software in their own language I never understand why so many users here on Vogons cling on to localized language specific Windows & DOS versions.

The biggest problems being that commands and menus are different. So when you find guides and instructions on the internet that are catered for the english version it just makes it more of a mess to find out how to do it. Also you're bound to install some english software which just makes everything a mess. FInding updates for the localized versions are also harder. I quit using my localized Windows version over 10 years ago because of these problems.

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Reply 13 of 16, by 133MHz

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vetz wrote:

While I understand why people with less english skills use Windows and software in their own language I never understand why so many users here on Vogons cling on to localized language specific Windows & DOS versions.

In my case:

  • Familiarity. I've been using Spanish Windows for about two decades now, so for me Spanish Windows is Windows.
  • Muscle memory. Alphabetically ordered lists (like the Device Manager tree) end up different between languages. If I were to switch I'd have to un-learn ~20 years of reflex actions.
  • As I've stated in the OP, I believe the Spanish localization of MS Windows is one of the best ever for a software product. Spanish localization is a huge pain, with its multitude of regional variants and formalisms most get it wrong or won't even bother, yet Microsoft has done an impressive job. Definitely up to par for something millions of people use every day. Other software... not so much, so I use English versions of badly localized programs.
  • When giving tech support to my fellow people it helps to run the same language OS as them.
  • Some degree of malware protection. I know something fishy is going on when I see Open instead of Abrir or Open folder to view files instead of Abrir carpeta para ver los archivos while trying to access an external drive, or any other important OS function suddenly turning to English. Most malware writers are lazy and don't localize their strings, making their tricks stand out like sore thumbs in Non-US versions of Windows.
vetz wrote:

The biggest problems being that commands and menus are different. So when you find guides and instructions on the internet that are catered for the english version it just makes it more of a mess to find out how to do it.

After so many years this is a non-issue to me. 😀
I used to read PC Magazine back in the 90s and they always printed both the English and Spanish commands/strings on their articles so not only did I learn a great deal of English in the process, it made me familiar with the English DOS/Windows despite rarely using it.

vetz wrote:

Also you're bound to install some english software which just makes everything a mess.

Well back in the day there were certainly badly written programs which used hardcoded directory paths, leading to us having both Archivos de programa and Program Files directories at the root of our drives, and using an IE installer from a different language to that of the OS was a surefire way to break your Windows installation, but again that eventually became a non-issue, and for small, simple software it was never an issue at all.

I use the English versions when I find the Spanish versions subpar (abbreviations, non-neutral tone, region-specific terms), or when I've become accustomed to the English version by being exposed to it first. This was my case with YouTube, the UI was English-only for years so when they finally localized it, I kept on using the English one. Both my local software library and the online platforms I use are a mix of languages based on personal preference.

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Reply 14 of 16, by 133MHz

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Speaking of bad interface translations, I just got this by going to CNET via a link on a Slashdot article:
jqUd0TY.png

It basically says:
CNET is found now in Spanish!
Go away to CNET Spanish (vete is a rude way of saying 'leave', as in 'you don't belong here')
The message does not repeat (Please do not show this again)

If that's a glimpse of what to expect from the new CNET en español, well... no thanks. 🤣

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Reply 15 of 16, by ElectricMonk

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Pasokon is japanese for Personal Computer/Laptops.

I've got an entire book on technical terms in japanese that I'm supposed to be reading, but i keep putting off. My conversational Japanese is ok, and I can read most katakana and hiragana, but my kanji skills are borderline illiterate.

I'll post more, when I find something decent.

8edit8

I forgot that the books are written in all three glyph sets. It'll take me a while to translate to romaji, and double check my translation. Probably wont get this done for a few days, as I have a 642-813 exam on wed I'm busy prepping for.

Reply 16 of 16, by SquallStrife

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In my experience with Japanese language software, a lot of the time the English term is substituted in, sometimes transliterated into katakana, but sometimes not.

E.g. this from an errata sheet from something-or-other.

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