Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2633
Location: Canberra, Australia8/28/19 9:09 PM |
About 25 years back (when Windows 95 first appeared) I wrote a Windows shell extension to perform file encryption, which I distributed as freeware, and with the help of people in different countries I eventually had it available in about nine different European languages. I would send the English text strings used in the program and get back the translations in another language. For most of the languages I could see the relationship between the English and the translation, with the exception of Finnish, which appeared to be completely alien to other European languages.
In Vanuatu, where I used to travel for work every so often, signage is often in three languages - English, French, and Bislama (Vanuatu Pidgin English), with Pidgin being the main language used. Some of the Pidgin phrases are quite evocative - for example, "sit-sit water" is the Pidgin phrase for "diarrhea".
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