Bitoduc: A French dictionnary for CS related words

by maeln • 6 years ago

95 96 6 years ago

maeln2• 6 years ago

On a side note, I always found the French word "octet" much better than "byte". First off, it avoid confusion with the unit naming (b = bits, o = octet, whereas B/b can be confused for byte / bit) and it is also much precise, octet = octo = 8, so an octet is 8 bits. On the other end, a byte doesn't really tell you what it is only "commonly" 8 bits.

0x4a42• 6 years ago

Octet is also an english word meaning a byte composed of 8 bits.

moray• 6 years ago

Octa is latin for eight, in fact also Italian has the word "ottetto" that is used more in an academic setting and becoming even less common. It is true though that in French saying Go (Giga-octet) instead of GB (Giga-byte) can avoid confusion with Gb (Giga-bit).

thwave• 6 years ago

The Latin for eight is octo.

jonasenordin• 6 years ago

(Moi; ne qu' French as a distant third language:) I really like 'octet' too! OTOH, but 'byte' is also good, especially the witty 4-bit 'nybble'/'nibble' :: 'byte'/'bite' ...'quartet' I guess? And the 'Mo' instead of the Mb/MB, as pointed out. But my favourite is 'logiciel' for 'binary'. The article has some words like 'boufficiel' that seems to be derived from that, meaning bloatware - nice!

rich_sasha5• 6 years ago

My favourite “french” word on the list is “cédérom”, literally just the phonetic writing of French pronounciation of CD ROM.

Beautiful language it is, I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida, Ordinateur, and now I have found a new depth of this...

_n_b_3• 6 years ago

But then, half of the time the English words end up being used anyway, despite what the Académie Française might think.

Outside of government forms, you basically never see 'courriel,' and you hear 'PC' way more than 'ordinateur'

I do love the word 'internaut' though.

doukdouk8• 6 years ago

Ordinateur is a very common word though.

maeln2• 6 years ago

Well, for NATO and AIDS it kind of make sense as they are direct translation of the acronym.

rich_sasha5• 6 years ago

Well, I think most of the world calls them NATO and AIDS.

For a counter example, lots of sports federations have French-based acronym names, and no one translates them. Like Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) or FIFA (federation internationale de football association).

For the latter, an extra twist is calling it ‘football’, not ‘ballon de pied’ or sth...

doukdouk8• 6 years ago

How often do English speakers use non-English-based acronyms?

I see USSR much more often CCCP, HIV more often than VIH...

widforss2• 6 years ago

The best acronym must be UTC. Let's make no one happy.

bloak• 6 years ago

How often do English speakers use non-English-based acronyms?

Not every often, but LSD is a notable example: the S is for "Säure", German for "acid".

Also names of foreign political parties: the full names of political parties aren't usually very informative, so expanding the acronym, translating it into English, and then making a new acronym would be ... unhelpful.

Edit: Of course it's not CCCP; it's СССР, or SSSR!

dragonwriter3• 6 years ago

Beautiful language it is, I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida,

French is one of two co-equal official languages of the North Atlantic Treaty, and OTAN is just as much the official acronym of the organization as NATO is.

rich_sasha5• 6 years ago

Yes, fair enough, but no one else seems to feel the need to translate these acronyms. There are probably (?) more German-speaking NATO citizens than French-speaking ones, and France isn’t even a regular member.

lm28469• 6 years ago

I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated.

It's a weird thing that started a long time ago, they want to keep french "french". It works to some extent and it's nice to be able to use "native" words rather than anglicism.

See this for example: https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2010/03/30/tout-un-ra...

mytailorisrich2• 6 years ago

'cédérom' is a shining example of committees trying to justify their existence.

CD came out and they were just called 'CD' in France (pronounced 'cédé') or, if using the actual words "disque compact".

Then CDROM came out, and they were just and only called 'CDROM' in France, but obviously pronounced in French so that it is pronounced 'cédérom'.

The Académie Francaise then woke up and decided that 'CDROM' was an outrageous English acronym and that a proper French word should be used. And they came up with... cédérom. You could not make this up even in a Monty Python skit.

I never understood why every foreign word in French has to be recreated. Otan, Sida, Ordinateur,

These are not recreated. These are just acronyms and words in another language than English...

outadoc2• 6 years ago

Why would you not translate acronyms like OTAN and SIDA? They're just as legitimate as the English variant, especially when they cross international borders.

French people will say ONU, OTAN or URSS because they're not tied to any English-speaking country, but they'll still use FBI or CIA, for example.

icare_1er2• 6 years ago

As a french, i can say that by using many of these words you would sound silly. But on the long run, it is clear that through regular changes to languages, people speak differently and actually believe to "think" differently.

More and more I see people writing emails with the Anglo-saxon cultural codes (ie. putting 3 lines of chit-chat at the beginning that no one cares about / saying "i am happy to ..." / etc).

And politicians are also gradually speaking more and more like CEOs of US companies. They use more and more terms like "resilience", "governance" (copy-pasted from english and with no actual meaning in French) which don't mean anything to most French. They start to have "managers", not "chefs", etc.... they "recommand", they no longer order.

_n_b_3• 6 years ago

As a native anglophone working in France, I appreciate the general lack of chit-chatty openings to emails (even if the trend may be negative, as you say) as I generally prefer to get to the point.

But I have noticed, since the start of COVID, the meaningless "j'espère que tu vas bien" ("I hope you are well") at the top of many emails, which feels like exactly the thing you are talking about--a lifting and translation of a meaningless English phase that feels appropriate but adds nothing of substance.

moviuro• 6 years ago

See Crocker's Rules [0, 1]. The little part "hope you're well" though was a nice touch. During lockdown when there were hundreds of deaths a day, it made sense. Taking 30 seconds during calls just to make sure your correspondant doesn't mourn seems wise to me.

[0] http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker

alex_duf• 6 years ago

As a French person living abroad (Canada then UK), I can say without a doubt that I've offended more than one person going straight to the point.

I'm getting better at beating around the bush now.

realusername• 6 years ago

As a french, i can say that by using many of these words you would sound silly. But on the long run, it is clear that through regular changes to languages, people speak differently and actually believe to "think" differently.

Half of those on the list don't make any sense indeed. They could have picked a better french translation people actually use instead.

As an example I could point laptop being translated as "Ordinateur de giron"(?) instead of "Ordinateur portable" which is the term people actually use.

doukdouk8• 6 years ago

I think this aspect is quite underestimated:

They start to have "managers", not "chefs", etc.... they "recommand", they no longer order.

Swapping English words for French words allow the word-swapper to soften a lot of things.

Having a _chef_ puts the hierarchical aspect first and foremost. There is the _chef_, and there are the subordinates. You might have a _patron_, but then there's a whole baggage of social conflicts between employees and _patrons_. The _patron_ definitely is not part of your circle. But having, say a _boss_ or a _manager_ or _leader_ is much softer.

Speaking of which, how do you translate "management" or "to manage"? If you choose "gestion" you have strong bean-counting implications, and if you choose "commander" you have, again you get military/hierarchical connotations. But "management" is (or perhaps was) devoid of such connotations.

A _crédit revolving_ does not sound scary - no idea what revolving means, something to do with a gun perhaps? But a _crédit permanent_ is super scary - you are going to be indebted forever and ever!

icare_1er2• 6 years ago

Yes definitely... i think the english language (or maybe i'm biased because i only speak it because i worked in the UK), inherently lends itself to ... marketing, to put it mildly.

And indeed all of the corporate language disguises the real nature of things. In the end, whether a boss asked me to do it, or a "manager" "encourages" me to "consider this option", the end result is exactly the same....

slim• 6 years ago

The worst are the meta-anglicisms that are plaguing the language : those coming from dubbed films, constructed solely for the lip syncing similarity with English words. Things like "rester tous les deux" which means "rester ensemble" but comes from the dubbing of "stay together". I hate them and I can't unsee them.. and I'm not even French

INTPenis• 6 years ago

15 years ago when I was at my first IT job, young and full of vinegar, I would argue with our Swedish version[1] of this type of site about essentially the americanization of CS language.

At the time I was adamant about using pure Swedish, even for CS. I had some crazy ideas for how to translate regular expressions, of course reguljära uttryck doesn't make as much sense to me today...

1. https://it-ord.idg.se/

anticristi3• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing!

It feels a bit outdated, though. I work in a cloud computing shop in Sweden and I hear terms that I couldn't find in the dictionary, e.g. "lastbalanserare".

snalty• 6 years ago

I love how BYOD has been translated to AVEC, which is French for 'with'.

yaantc• 6 years ago

I don't see an English translation for "jardinage", which is a colloquial term used for a software memory corruption. I've seen many native French speaker translate it directly and talking of "gardening", but it may be a bit surprising for non-French speakers?...

pbadenski2• 6 years ago

It's always been just a bit funny to me in case of French... A lot of these words are of Greek & Latin origin, some of them even come from French (eg. flame). I know I'm going to stir up a hornet's nest with this one... Are some French speakers nostalgic for when French had more influence?

doukdouk8• 6 years ago

More than French influence abroad, I think a lot of people do not like "poor English", for lack of a better term, replacing French in vernacular French. It seems to me that for most people, it's more about vernacular French becoming less fancy (random English words being sprinkled are a symptom, not the cause) than something specific about English, or French influence abroad.

Random examples:

- use of the word "digital" in the English meaning (number-related) when it already has a French meaning (finger-related, eg empreinte digitale - fingerprint) when there was alread a word for it - numérique.

- random English words to sound cool. The French Post Office launched an online-only bank called "Ma French Bank".

- English but with French words, i.e. using English sentences / idioms but in French. For instance, in French, you would say that something has or does not has meaning (ça n'a pas de sens !) but not that it makes or does not makes sense. Well, expect that now people took the English idiom and use it with French words - ça fait sens.

I think (but it is only my own opinion not backed by any kind of data) that there would be way less backlash if there was greater fluency and use of literate English rather than a poor use of globish.

People do not think watching a film in its original English version is bad.

But replacing _Faire du ciel le plus bel endroit de la terre_ by _Air France, France is in the air_ sounds super lame.

mytailorisrich2• 6 years ago

'digit' is interesting because its etymology is indeed 'finger' (latin 'digitus' that gave 'doigt' in French). In English it retains that meaning in specific cases like anatomy, but has otherwise shifted to meaning numbers below 10, probably from counting with our hands.

outadoc2• 6 years ago

"Ça juste marche"

anticristi3• 6 years ago

It might be a bit of that, but let me give you another perspective.

As a non-native English speaker, I see value in having local terms for IT. I witnessed how in the 90s my parents had to learn by heart terms like "file", "folder", "save". Needless to say, having to learn both an IT concept and a term, with no real-life analogy, significantly increases the barrier for learning how to use a computer. Image you got this device with a button called "cântă" which for some reason makes music play.

As an IT expert, local terms are pretty tedious, since they tend to appear late, after you already internalised the English ones.

pbadenski2• 6 years ago

Interesting.. In Polish this type of English influence I believe was largely constrained (although not entirely) to within IT profession. We have (and use) words for - "file", "folder", "save". Some exceptions that come to mind: "click" and "email". With concepts like "firewall" and "antivirus" we use English terms, but these are difficult to explain either way.

GeorgeRichard• 6 years ago

English: dictionary

French: dictionnaire

HN: dictionnary

danidiaz• 6 years ago

I like that in French, instead of collecting garbage, you collect bread crumbs: "ramasse-miettes"

Also, in German, earlier software versions are located downwards, not backwards: "Abwärtskompatibilität"

Peckingjay• 6 years ago

As a CS student in France, I've never actually seen the French version of most of these terms. (A very small subset of them I've used regularly though) Some of these translations also feel wrong: Laptop should probably be translated as 'ordinateur portable' and I've seen people use 'Débogueur' for Debugger, but never 'Dévermineur'. It just sounds weird and isn't coherent with the French translation for bug (bogue).

vmarchaud• 6 years ago

I believe there is a little bit of comedy around this. If you look at the repo [0] you'll see funny issues tags (even the tags of the repo themselves), for example "merci mais on s'en branle" which means "thanks but we don't give a fuck".

[0] https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr

0823498723498722• 6 years ago

Super! I propose the author of this project get a giclée portrait exposed in the Nef at the Grand Palais.

Now we attend until someone makes up a dictionary containing an anglophone translation for 'Coq'?

(Yes, this name is a bit ambiguous[1], two interpretations being (a) the symbol of france, a beast famous for making its presence known, as it would, early in the morning, and (b) a shortening of Thierry Coquand — compare CPL and MCPL)

[1] The latin ambi-, meaning 'both', suggests these are the only two interpretations. If one were especially puerile, one might attempt to come up with 2^144 interpretations (much easier if one's name is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23857339 Ireneo Funes) but there would be very little to recommend that beyond being able to write that it was a gross bit ambiguous.

widforss2• 6 years ago

Relevant Ask HN I asked earlier this summer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377270

draven• 6 years ago

The Github button on the top right says "Scissionnez moi sur Github", I found the translation funny.

The tags on the project here: https://github.com/soulaklabs/bitoduc.fr include "Branlette" (wanking), "humour-de-droite" (right-wing humor) and "bernard-pivot" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Pivot)

lifthrasiir• 6 years ago

The repo says that it's "a website to promote french words for computer concepts" (emphasis mine). I don't know about French but how many of them are actually in use? It sounds like another clueless attempt to massively update the already established vocabulary, which to my knowledge was never successful (as a Korean, I have seen a lot of them, a lot).

doukdouk8• 6 years ago

Most of them are not in use, or quite a few are joke translations rather than something that makes sense.

frabbit3• 6 years ago

Don't know about most of them but I like courriel and pourriel (the latter having connotations of rottenness) much more than e-mail and spam.

I don't see why Latin/Greek originating words like ampersand need their own "French" versions though.

frabbit3• 6 years ago

I also don't like the idea of étiquette for "tag" instead of balise (which suggests navigation instead of a label or price tag in a store) https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/balise

wazoox4• 6 years ago

But "perluette" or "esperluette" (both are valid) have existed in French for centuries. They were just uncommon words, and it's out of sheer ignorance that people use the English word instead.

For instance "dièse" is better known, so nobody would think of saying "sharp" or whatever other English word for the "#" sign. For some reason, "arobase" seems relatively well known as the normal French name for the "@" sign.

Kyrio• 6 years ago

I had absolutely no doubt that this was satire when I was reading it; for heaven's sake, the site is called bitoduc, their proposal for pipeline based on the French word for an oil pipeline (oléoduc), which definitely wouldn't be used by anyone here given how much it sounds like you're talking about a duke's genitals. But the site also lists genuine and common translations, and it seems most people in this comment section are criticizing it for containing weird, unused ones. I think it's the point; it's mocking the French language purists (often from Quebec, actually) who come up with funny-sounding, unidiomatic translations for English terms that people have already adopted.

On a side note, I love that we came up with our own word for computer ("ordinateur"), from a suggestion by an IBM employee's former humanities teacher, and I wish we could still do that instead of using English words or some weird transliteration of them. But it's a different time now, one when communication is instantaneous, computer science is discussed on the Web rather than in universities, and words become commonplace far before anyone can introduce a recommended translation. English is concise and prone to imagery, which means new concepts can often get accurate one-word descriptions which are more likely to stick than a three-word French equivalent.

p0nce• 6 years ago

Actually one of the origins of bitoduc.fr was reading a self-satisfying text about how genious the word "ordinateur" was, and how thankful we french should be that the term was invented.

That word comes from "ordiner", something the monks do. A computer is fundamentally more about calculus (computare) than sorting or order (ordinare).

That's about when the Bitoduc foundation was launched. bitoduc.fr is not satire, it was built to avoid another "ordinateur"; we believe in bottom-up word creation.

BrandoElFollito3• 6 years ago

Ordiner is what a bishop does. Actually, in a Larousse from the 50's, ordinateur was another waybto call a bishop (the one who ordinates).

Story time. During the 80's I was part of a jury for a competition in French for young foreigners. Their mother tongue cold not be French, and neither could the language of the country.

The theme of the dissertation was more or less "how are computers ("ordinateurs") changing contemporary life"

A Polish girl had an old dictionary where ordinateur = bishop.

She wrote a masterpiece on current religion affairs and got an extra price for the tough balancing on the "politics vd life vs religion" rope.

mumblemumble2• 6 years ago

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/ordinateur gives a decent account of the etymology.

Given that we're talking about something IBM did in 1955, I can accept putting things in order as being the function that the word focuses on, rather than calculation.

abrowne2• 6 years ago

“Ordinateur” is so much better than “computer”! As Wiktionary puts it

From Latin ordinator (“one who orders”), from ōrdinō (“to order, to organize”).
In its application to computing, it was coined by the professor of philology Jacques Perret […] who believed the word calculateur was too restrictive in light of the possibilities of these machines.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ordinateur#Etymology

aspyct• 6 years ago

Funny you should say that. I speak French, and always thought Computer was better than Ordinateur (and yes, it's ordinatEur, it's not a dinosaur :D )

bitwize2• 6 years ago

One legend surrounding the name of the Coq programming language is that there was another theorem prover called Bit -- a word that, in French, sounds a lot like bitte. So the French researchers behind Coq, in ironic tribute, named their theorem prover with a French word that soumds like an English word for the human anatomy part that bitte describes.

B5C8ECB24DB47D1• 6 years ago

It's actually spelled bite ;)

mumblemumble2• 6 years ago

Though sadly, the only Canadian term in common usage that I genuinely wish would spread to the rest of the word, "balado", only shows up here as a misspelling of the full version, "baladodiffusion", which nobody ever actually uses.

"Podcast" is a great term in English, but it sounds more like a clumsy, drunken orgy of consonants to me when dropped into the middle of a French sentence.

jgalar2• 6 years ago

We have very different experiences; I hear baladodiffusion (or balado) very often in Montreal.

aarroyoc• 6 years ago

Spanish also has "ordenador", which is the most common way to refer to a computer in Spain (I think in Hispanic America, "computador"/"computadora" is used more often but in Spain it feels like something old).

YeGoblynQueenne• 6 years ago

> English is concise and prone to imagery, which means new concepts can often get accurate one-word descriptions which are more likely to stick than a three-word French equivalent.

English is English. Not everyobody is a native English speaker. For example, I'm a Greek speaker and very sorry that I've spoken mostly English in the last 15 years of my life while studying, living and working in the UK. I miss Greek. I like English, I speak it fluently (as I speak French fluently and Italian er, not fluently) but my language is Greek and there will never be a language that is mine, other than Greek.

So I want to speak about my work and about my studies and my interests in Greek to my Greek friends and my Greek family, when I go back home for the holidays etc. I hate it that everyone asks me what I do (I study for a PhD) and I have to struggle to translate the things I study from English to Greek, when there are no real Greek terms for what I'm trying to say and when all the translations feel wooden and artificial on my tongue.

While the list in the article is (mostly, apparently) a joke, while translating English terms of trade and science to other languages often yields ridiculous results, it is a slap in the face to be told that "English is a better language for this kind of thing than your languages". My language is mine, dammit. When I speak it, it sounds better than yours. But maybe English sounds better than Greek when you speak it? Well, I wouldn't take either observation as evidence that one language is better than the other- not for describing new concepts concisely, not for anything. That's just a misunderstanding of how human languages work.

And anyway, this bit: "English is concise and prone to imagery" is the hubris of someone who was never, as a child, subjected to the horror of reading Balzac. You want imagery? Try Le Rouge et Le Noir.

Or maybe don't try it. I'm not a fan. But don't say such extremely tone deaf things with such self-assurance, please.

Edit: Or do say them. I'm not trying to tell you what to say. I'm just protesting. Because this is the internets.

pseudolus• 6 years ago

The 'Office québécois de la langue française' maintains a number of dictionaries relating to technology (informatique et hautes technologies) and many other domains [0]. Notwithstanding their efforts, a lot of the terms they propose just don't seem to have gained any traction.

[0] http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionna...

http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ressources/bibliotheque/dictionna...

hwj• 6 years ago

Here is a (390 pages long) German dictionary of systems programming:

https://www4.cs.fau.de/~wosch/glossar.pdf

ilovefood• 6 years ago

The "scissionnez moi" (fork me) on the top right really made my day. I would have translated it with "fourchettez moi" because the first time I read it some 10 years ago I immediately thought of food. :^)

0823498723498722• 6 years ago

You might enjoy New Orleans, where three topics of conversation which are always acceptable are: the meal we just had, the meal we're having, and the meal we're going to have.

wazoox4• 6 years ago

That is very French indeed. In France, we often talk of other meals we had or meals we'll have while eating our meal, and comparing this salad with that other salad, this wine with that one the other day, etc :)

bitwize2• 6 years ago

I love that the given translations for SOAP and REST are backronyms for French translations of the words (SAVON and REPOS).

jcq32• 6 years ago

It's all about politics. In France Big Data is never translated by "mégadonnées" but in Quebec, it is always because the people of Quebec like to defend their identity against the american culture.

Usually you translate a word to understand it better.

The paradox is that the people of Quebec speak fluent english whereas most of french people have a poor english.

Anyway pipeline in french remains pipeline but pronounced the french way. Bitoduc is a troll because bito is close to bite which means dick in french.

Conlusion : It's more a political quebec dictionnary than a french dictionnary.

BrandoElFollito3• 6 years ago

Pipeline is pronounced the English way in France. I have never heard anyone saying "une peepeuhleen"

jcq32• 6 years ago

Because French people working in the IT industry don't know it's an anglicism and are used to pronounce English words the English way.

However if you work in the construction industry you will hear "un pipeline".

In French, do you pronounce CIA the english way ? And API ?

sebastienbarre• 6 years ago

As a French who used to live in NY, it really is a STRANGE feeling to visit a French-speaking country like Canada and bump into a word you can FEEL is French, but have never heard of before.

For example, we use the literal words "airbag" or "showroom" in France, in the middle of an otherwise French sentence.

During my first visit to Montreal, I saw the word "chambre-a-montrer" in a storefront, and it took me a good 30 seconds to decipher it. Every compound word in "chambre-a-montrer" is French, but I still had to reverse-translate it back to English to realize that "chambre" = "room", "montrer" = "show", therefore I was looking at an actual French word for "showroom". Same goes for them using "coussin-a-gonfler" ("inflatable pillow") for "airbag".

They do that a lot, so in a sense they speak better French than us French people. Sure, the French Academy, the council for matters pertaining to the French language, comes up with French translations of common English words, but they are mostly derided for being a bunch of out-of-touch geezers.

jobigoud2• 6 years ago

Day-to-day language favors short words though, English is good at that. Do people in Canada really use "coussin-à-gonfler"? It's a mouthful and sounds weird. Also why not "coussin gonflable" or "coussin d'air"?

jgalar2• 6 years ago

I'm from Montreal. It's not "chambre-a-montrer", it's "salle de montre". Also "coussin-a-gonfler" is "coussin glonflable".

As for computer-science related words, I think the OQLF (French Language Office) does a great job overall. "Courriel" (e-mail) is one of their best contributions and is used regularly.

wazoox4• 6 years ago

Weird, the "Jargon Français" website ( http://jargonf.org ) has been available for... 25 years, or more? What's this one adding, exactly, out of the funny name?

beeforpork• 6 years ago

Double word: Trente-deuzet

How 16-bit centric, feels like from the 1980s.

I know, I know, dword ptr, qword ptr, etc. But I use 'movl' instead of 'mov dword ptr'.

pixdamix• 6 years ago

This website is likely targeted at the French administrations like the ANSSI (National Cybersecurity Agency of France) which is often mocked because of a somewhat strict `French Only Policy` in internal documents.

Here they are using `Biscuit de pile` for `Stack Cookies`: https://www.cert.ssi.gouv.fr/actualite/CERTFR-2015-ACT-047/

It may be the other way around, eg: someone inside ANSSI choosed to use `Biscuit de pile` to make people react:

- https://twitter.com/newsoft/status/671213007301648384

- https://twitter.com/x0rz/status/738272442771202048

Bitoduc: A French dictionnary for CS related words

Related Stories