Networking Language

[deanwebb]

Last week, I got to do training for a client... all in Spanish. Thanks to Google Translate, it wasn't all that bad. 

But GT needs to be able to understand technical terms stay constant across languages. Router, switch, stuff like that - the English word is really the universal word for that gear.

But the class did illustrate that IT is very much an English-speaking world. Training materials and cert exams are almost always in English. And even if your company doesn't have employees in English-speaking countries, if your employees speak more than one language, those cross-site meetings will likely be conducted in international English.

And that comes back to me - this last week taught me again the importance of using international English as opposed to native English. If I didn't translate what I wanted to say into Spanish, I made sure I at least translated it into international English.

[DesertFox]

In the past I have tried to read some networking books written in bulgarian (my native). The translation of the termins made them totally unreadable - I have lasted up to page 10

[deanwebb]

In the past I have tried to read some networking books written in bulgarian (my native). The translation of the termins made them totally unreadable - I have lasted up to page 10

I would guess most companies would just copy-paste with Google Translate and not even think twice, especially for languages with few speakers relative to English.

[DesertFox]

The problems were with university textbooks. No vendor will ever translated manuals for networking gears (I hope). Almost all of us learned via English courses / videos, etc.

[deanwebb]

The problems were with university textbooks. No vendor will ever translated manuals for networking gears (I hope). Almost all of us learned via English courses / videos, etc.

On one hand, it would be nice to have translated materials... but on the other hand, a bad translation can wind up being worse than no translation...