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Comment by liotier | Hacker News Reader

> Non native english speaker, but I use English menus for all programs, and English menu language for the OS.

So do I - on workstations I control. Alas the mandatory corporate Windows laptop isn't one of them, so I have to constantly switch between English on my own devices and French on that laptop... Definitely hampers shortcut memorization.

Also, a curse on Microsoft for localizing Excel formulas - what were they thinking ?

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Well I see the point to try to cater to users that might not be fluent in english - the target userbase for Excel is much more broad than a programming language, and if you want someone with low knowledge of both computers and english to be using Excel effectively, it helps a lot that e.g. your rows column is called "rows" and not asdfghjkl or something gibberish for you.

You seem to be french - so I am confident you can picture someone (dad, mom, an old uncle perhaps?) that would have an easier time remembering that a function is called RECHERCHEV than if it were called VLOOKUP or ASDFNASF!#^E3 or what have you.

As long as there are not namespace clashes, it seems to make sense to allow both, simply as a parent said the pervasiveness of English language documentation (that MS do a lot to promote through awards and certificates).

I don't know who downvoted you without any comment, I for one believe that that could be a good idea: just support all languages as alias and hide what is not your language - but don't cap the use of the foreign functions. If the interface is gentile whenever you see a spreadsheet from another country, it could be feasible.

> picture someone would have an easier time remembering that a function is called RECHERCHEV than if it were called VLOOKUP

Yes, but then make that language a user-switchable parameter... It is not like Microsoft is shy of adding parameters to the settings dialog...

"Also, a curse on Microsoft for localizing Excel formulas - what where they thinking ?"

+1. It's like programming in Java or C and all the keyworks (if, interface, etc...) were changed to the local language.

Madness.

That was a thing, for a while: ALGOL, COBOL, a few others had alternate keyword sets for non-English languages.

I saw a "translation for C", which was a header that #defined the keywords to their local language equivalents

MS actually did that with Visual Basic for Applications in Excel 95.

Umlaute in keywords, yay!

Example stolen from Wikipedia:

  Prüfe Fall wd
    Fall 1
      ' Auf Sonntag wird Datum vom letzten Freitag zurückgegeben
      VorherigerGeschaeftstag = dt - 2
    Fall 2
      ' Auf Montag wird Datum vom letzten Freitag zurückgegeben
      VorherigerGeschaeftstag = dt - 3
    Fall Sonst
      ' Andere Tage: vorheriges Datum wird zurückgegeben
      VorherigerGeschaeftstag = dt - 1
  Ende Prüfe

Ugh, I did some VBA in Germany around 2000. So crazy that keywords were in German (and command and periods have different meanings in numbers). Totally unportable code.

The non-programmers in other countries are actually more confused with the English formulas than with their native ones. I know as, not living in the English speaking country, I had to explain various Excel functionality (and formulas) to such people.

And it's true even for those who during some time in their life spent some years in some English speaking country.

I second that curse.

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