Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watcgl!kim
From: kim@watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Canada -- One or two cultures
Message-ID: 
Date: 12 Aug 89 06:07:09 GMT
References: <89Aug3.145600edt.10404@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
	<28168@watmath.waterloo.edu> 
	<3521@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Sender: daemon@watcgl.waterloo.edu
Distribution: can
Organization: PAMI Group, U. of Waterloo, Ontario
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In-reply-to: gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca's message of 11 Aug 89 12:22:37 GMT

In article <3521@uwovax.uwo.ca> gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca (Gerard Stafleu) writes:

   In the late sixties the French government had ALGOL-60 officially 
   translated into French (meaning that keywords like BEGIN, END, PROCEDURE 
   and so on got translated to French equivalents).  Then there was a 
   strong drive to use the French version in schools, universities and so 
   on.  I'm not sure how successful this exercise was in the end, or 
   whether they repeated it with other languages.

I once got a close look at the French-ized version of Logo.  It was
absolutely incomprehensible.  From the major French computing
magazines that I saw, programs were written in the normal "English"
computer languages.

Perhaps the French have gone on with their language conversion, but if
they have, they are simply heading for a dead end, because no one else
in the world will use that language but them, not when even the
Japanese use the English versions.
--
Kim Nguyen 					kim@watsup.waterloo.edu
Systems Design Engineering  --  University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada