First post, by 133MHz
- Rank
- Oldbie
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:
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?
