Disjointed English

[dchapiesky]

I have noticed an increasing amount of disjointed english being used in technical documentation of projects I follow...

One in particular - http://www.dpdk.org has technical docs which, while accurate in details, use English in what I can only describe as a difference "cadence"... You expect a comma and some pronouns and adjectives and maybe even a preposition... but instead you get a period and another short inane sentence.

A post recently on the forum had a link to viva64 and an article with a similar disjointed English article.

Has anyone else noticed this?

In a private discussion it was suggested to me that the reason is so that automatic translation of the docs to other languages is more accurate. While I cannot dispute that possibility, the scientific community pretty much acknowledges English as the language for information publishing - meaning if you want you paper read - write it in English. I would think that you would have to provide translations.. but acknowledge that the gold standard for your docs are in English...

Just a rambling at 3:41am...

cheers

[Solar]

I only had a quick glance at dpdk.org, but found nothing too much out of the ordinary.

But I agree that, especially in the computing world, English is the go-to language, and not only for standalone documentation. Being German myself, I have scolded coworkers for using a two-language mix in identifiers, file names, and comments for a long time. In our business, you can be expected to have a firm grasp of technical English.

Moreover, catering for automated translation of your documents is several flavors of silly. You need a native speaker (or equivalent) to do the translation. To my (rather recent) experience, automatic translation especially of technical documentation just doesn't cut it (and those competent enough will probably opt for the English original anyway).

[iansjack]

I see what you mean. A typical sentence from one of their documents:

The board assigned to be tester should be installed the latest Fedora distribution for easily installed DPDK Test Suite required python modules.

You can just about work out what it means, but....

Wait 'till China gains ascendency and we all have to write programs and documentation in Mandrin.

[dozniak]

A post recently on the forum had a link to viva64 and an article with a similar disjointed English article.

They are Ukrainians with native Russian language skills, typical english skill level is below mediocre in UKR/RUS.

[Kazinsal]

Wait 'till China gains ascendency and we all have to write programs and documentation in Mandrin.

I wonder what the equivalents of "foo", "bar", "baz", and "quux" are in Hanzi...

[ggodw000]

Renowned software dev once said, I'd rather hire english major for sw engineers because they can learn the code but it never happens the other way around. i thought that is crazy but now I agree 100%.

[alexfru]

Renowned software dev once said, I'd rather hire english major for sw engineers because they can learn the code but it never happens the other way around. i thought that is crazy but now I agree 100%.

I would prefer to avoid majoring or minoring in English, which would be required to understand what an English major writes.

[ggodw000]

it is not the language issue, it is all about tidiness, responsibility and quality that has gone away long through window and slackiness are everywhere.
it can exhibits and manifest in a different way other than broken english.

Just a few minutes ago, decided to download and run NAMD simulation kit's Windows version and some ashole puts a Linux instruction in the Windows distribution package.

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Development/Down ... eName=NAMD

[dchapiesky]

it is all about tidiness, responsibility and quality that has gone away long through window and slackiness are everywhere.

Just a few minutes ago, decided to download and run NAMD simulation kit's Windows version and some ashole puts a Linux instruction in the Windows distribution package.

Yes - systemic attitudes about properly documenting stuff...

Concerning your download: I worked closely with physicists for 10 years.... those docs are by physicists who are programmers and I have never met a physicist who didn't slack on the documentation...

"It's trivial!"

[ggodw000]

it is all about tidiness, responsibility and quality that has gone away long through window and slackiness are everywhere.

Just a few minutes ago, decided to download and run NAMD simulation kit's Windows version and some ashole puts a Linux instruction in the Windows distribution package.

Yes - systemic attitudes about properly documenting stuff...

Concerning your download: I worked closely with physicists for 10 years.... those docs are by physicists who are programmers and I have never met a physicist who didn't slack on the documentation...

"It's trivial!"

May be it was not that bad for namd. Out of five gpu enabled apps i planned to benchmark, Gromacs and caffe were superior terms of installation, especially Gromacs worked flawlessly. Worst offender was tensorflow. Overall it was good journey.

[ggodw000]

look at what slackers are dropping balls in nvidia ftp, slackers infested every corner like a rat, it is everywhere, take a few step:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/torch-libr ... ation.html
...
ML_REPO_PKG=nvidia-machine-learning-repo_4.0-2_amd64.deb && wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/co ... L_REPO_PKG && sudo dpkg -i $ML_REPO_PKG - See more at: http://www.nvidia.com/object/torch-libr ... 0sJgw.dpuf
...


nvda@ubuntu:~/torch$ ML_REPO_PKG=nvidia-machine-learning-repo_4.0-2_amd64.deb && wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/co ... L_REPO_PKG
--2017-01-14 15:34:03-- http://developer.download.nvidia.com/co ... _amd64.deb
Resolving developer.download.nvidia.com (developer.download.nvidia.com)... 23.72.38.99, 23.72.38.112
Connecting to developer.download.nvidia.com (developer.download.nvidia.com)|23.72.38.99|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2017-01-14 15:34:04 ERROR 404: Not Found.


nvda@ubuntu:~/torch$ ML_REPO_PKG=nvidia-machine-learning-repo-ubuntu1404_4.0-2_amd64.deb && wget http://developer.download.nvidia.com/co ... L_REPO_PKG
--2017-01-14 15:39:32-- http://developer.download.nvidia.com/co ... _amd64.deb
Resolving developer.download.nvidia.com (developer.download.nvidia.com)... 23.61.195.80, 23.61.195.74
Connecting to developer.download.nvidia.com (developer.download.nvidia.com)|23.61.195.80|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 2738 (2.7K) [application/x-deb]
Saving to: ‘nvidia-machine-learning-repo-ubuntu1404_4.0-2_amd64.deb.1’

100%[==============================================================================>] 2,738 --.-K/s in 0s

2017-01-14 15:39:32 (302 MB/s) - ‘nvidia-machine-learning-repo-ubuntu1404_4.0-2_amd64.deb.1’ saved [2738/2738]

[matt11235]

sudo app-get

It seems like somebody dictated the commands to the computer through some speech recognition thing and then never bothered to proofread it.

[dchapiesky]

sudo app-get

It seems like somebody dictated the commands to the computer through some speech recognition thing and then never bothered to proofread it.

It probably thought they were chinese.... (sry bout that. )

[Ycep]

Have you ever heard for Serbo-English Google Translate?
Try to translate something in it. Only thing you will get is english all wrotten on cyrillic.
Like:
English -> Serbian
You're talking to me? -> Јоу'ре талкинг то ме?
Or even Serbo-German Google Translate...
Really, 13mil people could not have basic translation to international languages...
Through there is more than 13 million. Right calculation would be:
Population of Serbia + Serbs in Germany, Austria and America and Norway + ( Population of Macedonia / 2) + Population of Bosnia + (Population of Croatia/2) which is basically = 20 million.

[ggodw000]

We have an engineer just moved from shanghai ,but uses punctuation like this ,when writing email .i cant duplicate his grammar because it is so messed up .