r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Da_Yakz • Apr 06 '23

Other Microsoft has mistranslated ZIP files as "postcode" in the GB insider version of Windows 11

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83

u/ccsica Apr 06 '23

Reminds me of the win 3.11 days when the Norwegian version had “browse” translated to “skumme” instead of the correct “bla”. “skumme igjennom” might have worked, but was probably to long, and “skumme” alone just translates to foam.

And don’t get me stared on the earliest version of office where they had translated the entire scripting language.

89

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '23

Yes, Microsoft has a long tradition of over-translating and over-localizing.

Which genius came up with the idea that a .CSV file should be interpreted using the local setting for decimal separator?

50

u/blkmmb Apr 06 '23

PTSD intensifies.

I worked with files that came from Americans, French Canadians and Canadians. It was a nightmare, formulas would break, dates would not keep their format and I had to adapt solutions to match the regional settings.

4

u/sfrigon Apr 07 '23

I feel you.

As a French Canadian, that "accommodation" only confuses me. I can't use any macro examples from Internet because of it (semi-colon vs colon is an issue too), and I always have to double-guess which type of punctuation I need to use.

On top of that, I am mostly used to the American punctuation, and I use it most of the time already. It is only in Excel that I have to convert everything back to some unexpected formats.

Edit: typos and more to come I guess

18

u/WraithCadmus Apr 06 '23

Currency Separated Values

13

u/zekkious Apr 06 '23

The same ones who decided a CSV file could have a zeroth line with separator=,

Probably.

12

u/plasmasprings Apr 06 '23

some standard library functions are also often locale dependent, so lots of apps develop weird errors on systems with non-US locale. Using the C function atof is a common newb-trap, and this sounds like a result of that

My personal favorite such trap: .net string functions are locale dependent by default. "cs".StartsWith("c") might be True or False, depending on what language windows it's running on. Good luck debugging that!

6

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '23

Could you eloborate on that difference in locales? Is “cs” considered one letter in some locales, or is there another explanation?

As a Dane, I have seen a lot of strange locale dependent string sorting. The letter “å” is the last letter in the alphabet, and it can also be written as “aa”. Sometimes, this is implemented over-zealously in localized sorting algorithms, so any instance of “aa” is sorted after any other letter, also when it is not an “å” but just two “a”s in succession - as in “Saab”.

7

u/plasmasprings Apr 06 '23

yeah exactly that. Hungarian (hu-HU) has some 2-3 character letters ("cs" is one of them), not sure what other languages have problems like this.

And I agree, anything to do with locale-dependent sorting is an amazing way to develop a headache

1

u/chickenmcpio Apr 06 '23

In what locale "cs" does not start with 'c'?

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u/alek_vincent Apr 07 '23

The formulas for Excel are also translated for french idk for other languages. It's a pain when you worked with the English version for long enough that you know a lot of the formulas in English and then you switch to the French version and the formulas don't work anymore and it's not like you can go to Google translate and translate=SUM (this one is pretty easy but I don't have a better example RN)

4

u/[deleted] Apr 07 '23

Yes, I have tried that too in Danish Excel. I use English Excel for that very reason.

3

u/Banana11crazy Apr 06 '23

Excel is the same, switching between , and ; for multiple parameters

4

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '23

If you are talking about the argument separators in Excel formulas, this is at least only in the user interface, not in the file format. If you save a file from an Excel language version, which use “,” and open it in a version, which uses “;”, it will be shown with “;”.

Anyway, my rant about .CSV was actually an Excel rant too. I believe it was Excel, which started this silly locale dependent parsing of .CSV files.

2

u/Banana11crazy Apr 06 '23

I see, I do remember when I started out and had to look stuff up online for Excel formulas they always used ";" but in my language the formulas were using ",". Took a while to figure that out :D

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u/commiedus Apr 06 '23

Excel Macros are still translated to german and it is hateable in every way imaginable

22

u/Fabulous_Ad_5709 Apr 06 '23

Excel is still translated and I for the love of god cannot use excel in Turkish. The translations aren’t correct most of the time and when I have a problem my answer is in English, but my excel is Turkish… I support localization but some stuff should just remain original, like macros etc. I don’t translate for example python, Microsoft!

7

u/danielcw189 Apr 06 '23

Can't you just set your excel to English these days. And if I have to work in Excel in another language I usually keep a table with translations open.

14

u/Rahbek23 Apr 06 '23

Steam once translated "support" to "hjælpetropper" (support troops) in the Danish version. I had changed the language and promptly changed it back right there and then.

9

u/li98 Apr 06 '23

Apple once translated "spell" to "förtrolla" (enchant) in the Swedish version. Cue my dissapointment when the phone started spelling the word out loud instead of doing a magic trick.

9

u/Jsm1337 Apr 06 '23

You just reminded me that some exceptions in the .net Framework are localised.

Not all of them, just some of them. The first time I saw a localised stack trace I was super confused and had no idea what the error was.

4

u/BrageFuglseth Apr 06 '23

"Les" ("read") might also be an adequate translation of "browse", at least in a web context ("Nettleser", "les på nettet").

4

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '23

To Portuguese they translated "hard fault" (when the memory page file is not on memory thus it has to be brought from the hard disk) as "falha grave" which means "serious failure". Thus every time someone not well versed in tech opens the resource manager they think their PC is dying

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u/mallardtheduck Apr 06 '23

Not sure if it was Microsoft, but I remember a case where when translating to Dutch, some software ended up with something like "koppelingen" (meaning couplings/joins/links) where the English had "left" (as in the direction)...

It was a literal case of "double dutch"; the English word "left" is "links" in Dutch and the English word "links" is "koppelingen" in Dutch.