JavaScript For the Rest of Us

First time accepted submitter my2iu writes "The JavaScript programming language is both widely available and very powerful. Unfortunately, since only 6% of the world's population are native English speakers, the other 94% of the world are forced to learn English before they can start using JavaScript. Babylscript is an open source project that aims to translate JavaScript to all the world's languages, including French, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. The project has recently completed its 12th translation, enough so that the native languages of over 50% of the world's population are now supported!"

Comments

VBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because having local-language versions worked out so well for VBA - and that isn't even on the internet.

Re:VBA?

[Rei]

Even here in Iceland where everyone is quite fluent in English (much moreso than in Japan), technical terms still are often handled in Icelandic. Aka, if you read the news about the Higgs announcement, it's not the "Higgs Boson", but "Higgs Bóseindin". It's not "centripetal force", but "miðflóttaafl". It's not "electromagnetic radiation", but "rafsegulbylgjir". Yeah, people sometimes use the English terms too (even for common words, some English words have become pretty much embedded in the language unfortunately), but in general, Iceland strives to avoid that. Even words for new products - computer is "tölva (number-prophet), phone is sími (old word for "line"), etc. The other Nordic languages don't do this sort of thing nearly as much.

And this is different...???

[Grashnak]

How is this different than every other programming language I've ever encountered? And doesn't writing javascript in, say, Arabic, just make it inaccessible to 99% of the people who like look at your code?

Re:And this is different...???

[marcello_dl]

IIRC applescript had localized versions. There wasn't a problem in reading foreign scripts because keywords were translated (at one point keyword must be recognizable to the interpreter, that makes it relatively easy to translate them.

It is still not a good idea, of course. You need to copypaste a script from a blog and have it translated by the interpreter before understanding it.

And as a foreigner I can attest that the translation of keywords is a non-existent problem. Either you know the syntax of the whole command (parentheses, colons, semicolons, tabs, whatever) or you look it up. Once you have memorized it, could be english, your tongue, or LOLCODE, doesn't matter.

I'd possibly endorse localized versions of Logo and Smalltalk for basic teaching to kids. Everything else is overkill.

Re:And this is different...???

[UnknownSoldier]

> I see this as an interesting idea. Why should I write "if" instead of "jos" (i.e. Finnish)? The latter is easier for Finns to understand and learn, especially if they are very young (or very old).

Except this idea was designed by people who have no clue how interpreters/compilers do their parsing.

So now I have to add *all possible potential translation words* as reserved for identifiers??

Using your Finnish example...

"English";
var jos = 1; // OK, jos is not a reserved word IN English
if( jos ) console.log( "jos = " + jos );

"Finnish";
var jos = 1; // FAIL, jos is reserved as 'if' in Finnish
jos( jos ) console.log( "jos = " + jos ); // ERROR: AMBIGUOUS

Forced to learn English to learn Javascript?!

[bool2]

Javascript keywords are English words but it's quite a leap to suggest you need to know English to learn Javascript! In fact, it might be an advantage to have the keywords as foreign words because they represent abstract concepts that ought to be considered apart from their real world meanings. IMHO.

Re:Forced to learn English to learn Javascript?!

[dargaud]

Exactly. I learned programming in France, at a time when there were some (rather bad) national programming languages like LSE where the words seemed too grounded and loaded with double meanings. Also there were several translated versions of Basic. Some commands were much longer to type, some others didn't translate directly and the equivalent was unintuitive at best, and finally you couldn't type listings found in programming magazines.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

The programming language is the language, not the english language. You need to learn keywords, they could be klingon, do not need to make any sense for you. On the other hand, documentations are usually written in english.