[Squeakland] 'Powerful Ideas Book' now available!

[diegogomezdeck at consultar.com]

Hi Daniel...

[small snip]
> Regarding the Spanish version, I will have a look at it the moment I
> find some time. Unluckily, I don´t have much spare time, and the little
> I have left, I feel it is more important to BE with my child than to
> "work" for him.

Yes, every of us are exposed to the decision ("to BE with" or "to work
for") but there are a better option: "to work with" or better "to learn
together". Instead of following the classic idea of "teaching" where one
person (aka the teacher) knows and teach to people without knowledge.

I decide to follow the other "let's lean together"... and you know, I
learned really a lot from my son but, the most important, it's much more
funny!

> Still I believe I should find the time, at least to "play" with Squeak
> and be able to transmit something to him.

Try to play with him and learn together.

> Regarding a multilingual Squeak I am not sure what to say. On one side
> I believe that translating menus and dialog boxes are a good thing.

Our goal (in Small-Land) is to translated all the GUI and nothing more.

> Still I have seen many translations that to be keen: are lousy.

Sure... In Babel we'll provide to the user a tool where the translations
can be changed and also a "debug" mode is available where the translated
phrase is shown together with the original one. (see the attached image
menu_in_spanish.jpeg)

[small snip]
> On the other hand, in Spanish, depending from where someone is, there
> are many expressions that are more local than international, and to
> make matters worse, I have found that, to say the same thing in English
> and in Spanish, in English it takes most of the time (95% roughly) less
> (much less) letters than in Spanish.
> This ends up meaning, smaller menus, easier to read and understand, and
> finally to convey the message. I would say it ends up having a better
> user interface, which I cater the most.

Did you see (just as an example) the Japanese Squeak translation? (look at
http://hw001.gate01.com/%7Ethoru/squeak/tour/img/image75.gif).  I never
felt so lost in Squeak before!  I don't want to expose the kids to this
feeling.

> Although I love my mother tongue, I see specially in English this inner
> beauty regarding software. I am not completely sure, but the English
> language has fewer words than Spanish (only a fact).

Sure.  What we're talking about kids and most of them are not bilingual.  I
write all my programs in English but my son (who knows quiet a lot of
English) feel much more comfortable with eToys in Spanish.

> On the other hand, a written verbose computer language by itself, I am
> not so sure if it is a good thing to translate and have many
> incarnations or flavors for that matter.
> A good case has been applescript that if I am not wrong could have had
> different incarnations (flavours) of the computer language but never
> did (at least in Spanish).

We'll not translate the Smalltalk language but the GUI.

> Besides all technical material ends up appearing first in English (even
> though the author might have another mother tongue)  and only then in
> other languages only to show that the info probably would be outdated.
>
> This was the reason I put in my previous e-mail the part of music as
> opposed to a verbose language.
>
> Yours,
>
> Daniel

Cheers,

Diego Gomez Deck
http://www.small-land.org


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