That's why I always select "English (US)" when installing an OS or creating an account online. No bad or missing translation, no mangled UI because of longer words, and of course easily searchable error messages.

Yeah, that's why unlocalize.com exists (or... existed? Dunno, seems down from here!) Or you can have used the official Microsoft Language Portal... until they removed it and replaced it with the worse https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/reference/microsoft-language-resources (but it's still usable, I guess...)

Spanish is also wrong, this one means "ignore-letter-size". I'm not sure if there is an official correct way to say in a short manner, I would say "ignorar-capitalizacion" but I think it's just a barbarism.

Also why did they use Arabic script for the Arabic but not hiragana/kanji for the Japanese?

Just curious, what would be a correct translation?

grep --Groß--und-Kleinschreibung-der-Buchstaben-ignorieren

Try using Excel in another language than English. You have to hope someone, that speaks your language had exactly the same problem as you, because all the formulas get translated and Excel doesn't recognize the English version when your language isn't set to English.

tar --extrahieren --volle-ausgabe --gezippt --folgende-datei

you have concisely convinced me how terrible an idea this is.

May I introduce you to the concept of Microsoft Excel?

One time, someone from HR asked me, if I could help them with an Excel formula. So, I quickly looked up how to do something like that in Excel, adapted it as needed on my laptop, then sent it to them. And well, it didn't work on their system, because I coded it in English, whereas their OS was in German.

Even if everyone is using English, there will be cultural differences. I used to work at a company which had a lot of indian externals working on their code base. Whenever I had to work on a mainly Indian developed project i had to get used to how they wrote things. Usually things where named a bit different. Not by much, but enough tho throw me off a couple of times before i got used to it.

IMPORTANT: I am not shitting on how they used English, merely pointing out that they used it differently from how i would have expected.

To be fair, sometimes I look at my own code and think it was done in another language, and I only know English.

Wouldn't it be easy to convert the code to any language if this was the case though? Any human-language programming is already an abstraction, so why can't a programming language be abstracted to more than one human language? Literally just swap the command words out for words in the other language, seems like something modern IDEs can trivially do if a language like that existed.

Also, non-English speaking countries exist. Some have actually developed programming languages in their own language so the idea of non-English programming isn't exactly unheard of. There is no reason that code that won't be edited by English speakers should always be written in English, it's not like it's the one perfect human language for interfacing with computers or anything. So I suspect that should this become a reality, you wouldn't even notice anything's changed unless you live in a non-English speaking country. Either way your company can still always just require code to be in English, the same way companies have requirements for formatting and software design philosophies.

The joke is that it's hard to tell if this is a joke because the lines between good intentions, corporate jargon, and feasibility have been blurred beyond recognition both here and in the real world.

It's also funny that after all these years, i18n is still a mess. Moreover, even if translations are standard in GUIs and documentation, for some reason, everyone is okay with defaulting to English for the oldest form of computer interaction.

Also, the joke is whatever you want it to be. Follow your dreams.

I have to use a German API with weird halftranslations and ultra long names, due to bad model generation. Something like getPersonAntragsPersonAdressDetailEintragList().

Unfortunately, it makes sense, since many of the terms have a very precise legal meaning and can't be unambiguously translated.

Because they didn't think it out fully lol

There shouldn't even be dashes imo since they replace spaces and Japanese doesn't use spaces.

Really ducking hope so. I hate translated software to my native language.

My blood boiled there. Like excel that has functions in all languages. Completely insane.