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
