Re: Emacs user manual in Spanish

[Emanuel Berg]

Jean Louis wrote:

> There is nothing wrong in translating
> function names to offer easier way of editing
> to people who are maybe not familiar with the
> English and GNU Emacs in general.

By translating "function names", are we talking
hanging a translated coat over the menus and
buttons of the GUI Emacs or are we talking
aliasing all the zillion commands of Elisp?

The "coat" solution is something I saw way back
in the accursed Java/Eclipse world when there
were "resources" who mapped back and forth.

I suppose I don't really mind if the program is
intended for the masses. At some point the user
will anyway realize that having a subset
translated is just confusing and a limitation,
and he/she will have the whole application
in English.

However Emacs is one of the most advanced and
powerful software systems ever created. And you
are saying you are teaching this system to
students in Tanzania with no problem, only at
the same time these people cannot understand
the English of `find-file', `kill-emacs', and
so on?

And if they cannot understand that, and you
won't have them since you walk around the
problem by translating the commands, how do you
ever expect them to take the next step and
benefit from the whole system, all external
components, and all documentation, all of which
is only available in English?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573