Curiosities

This is the most extreme example I came over so far for why I refuse to use the German language in all technical or scientific texts. Most of my technical postings in this weblog are in English to serve help-seeking people from all places in the world; the “inter-” in “internet” stands for international, btw., and the international language for technical or scientific texts is (US-)English. The common programming languages are made of English words (if, else, while, true, false, whatever) and rely on the English keyboard layout for easy insertion of special characters ({}, [], \, /, etc.). The German localization of menu entries in all kinds of electronic devices is pervaded with weird abbreviations. That’s why I operate everything, from PC to digital camera, in the original language. (And I prefer TV series and movies in their original.)

Now look at this screenshot of a German-localized cell phone:

“Alle Radiofunk. w. ausg. Sie können nur Anw. verw., b. den. k.ein Funksen. z. Eins. kom.” ¿WTF? Funny, the Germans are dumb enough to not understand any English, but they’re smart enough to understand the meaning of that text and of the term “Flight mode”. (Btw, this reminds me of a TV ad about a brand called Splendid, where they say “Das find’ ich echt splendid!” as if anyone of their target audience knew its meaning.)