Re: Proposal for an improved `help-for-help'

[Alan Mackenzie]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2021 at 18:15:13 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2021 15:02:47 +0000
> > Cc: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,
> >   emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>

> > > "foreign" implies a specific point of reference.

> > So does "international", used as it is here.

International means "between nations", as in an "international
conference", an "internation railway line", .....  It does not mean
"foreign" or "Non-USA".

> Really?  I though i18n, l10n, and the like are established terminology
> nowadays.

Yes, they are correct usage.  "Internationalisation" means "make
something usable in lots of nations".

For example:

>   https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/intl/international-support

That usage means "foreign", i.e. "non-USA".  It is not intended to
support people who work in two or more nations, for example.

Surely we can do better than Microsoft, here.

> There's also "multilingual" and m17n, but I thought it was less known.
> However, maybe we should consider something like "Multilingual Help"?

Why?  Nobody wants "multilingual help" - at least not usually.  We each
seek help in, if possible, our own language.  We're not talking about
helping people who speak several languages, or for translation services,
we're talking about help in languages which aren't English.  Why can't
we just say that?

We can't hide for long that the single "native" language in Emacs is
(American) English.  Why should we try?  What's wrong with
"Non-English"?  It says exactly what's meant, and surely is unlikely to
cause offence.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).