Re: AW: tlug: Japanese filenames (was: EUC & SJIS)

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Thu, 10 Sep 1998 TBaetzle@example.com wrote:

> > Moreover, why would a
> > person who couldn't read Japanese want to download a file that was in
> > Japanese anyway?
> > 

> How about a learner who just wants to get program up and running?

How about: the Japanese software available for Linux was all developed by
and for native speakers, and most of it is free, so I don't see where
people have any really solid ground for complaint if the documentation is
in a language they can't read.

> Being interested in a language doesn't necessarily mean that one's
> also fluent in it.  

We all face challenges to our ability.  I can't read everything I come
across without the aid of a dictionary either.  But that's life in a
multi-lingual world, and no one is under any particular obligation to
provide me with documentation that is written in my native language if I'm
not paying them to do so.

That whole thing about downloading files with Japanese names is a red
herring anyway.  The original discussion was not about having Japanese
file names on an FTP server (something I have never actually seen, except
for some documents that were written in Japanese, in which case it is
totally justified: a person who can't read the filename couldn't read the
file, either), but was about using Japanese file names on your local
system and how some people wrongly consider there to be something wrong
with that.  Such a position, however, is linguist discrimination, and
there is something wrong with *that*

Let's turn the tables and take a look at what a person who doesn't
understand English might go through when using an FTP server.  In most
cases, all or nearly all of the files on that server will have filenames
derived from English.  For a person who does not read English or reads it
very poorly, this throws quite a bit of challenge into getting the files
she needs.  Worse, the readme in the directory is almost surely going to
be only in English.  Where are your complaints that something should be
done to make it easier for her to read that file and get that English
software working on her computer? After all, her being interested in
English-language software or in the language itself doesn't necessarily
mean she's also fluent in it, right?

But if we do need a widely spoken, international language to be the
official language of computers, perhaps we need to look at Chinese.
More people speak Mandarin than any other language, and the number of
people who can read Chinese is probably nearly two billion.  How would you
like everything on your computer to be in kanji only, without even kana to
help out? If computers had been pioneered and advanced in China instead 
of the U.S., that's exactly how it would be, and we'd be worrying about 
making English work correctly on our computers  :-)

Cheers,

Jonathan

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