Falsehoods programmers believe about languages

This is what we have to put up with in the software localisation industry.

I can’t believe nobody has done this list yet. I mean, there is one about names, one about time and many others on other topics, but not one about languages yet (except one honorable mention that comes close). So, here’s my attempt to list all the misconceptions and prejudices I’ve come across in the course of my long and illustrious career in software localisation and language technology. Enjoy – and send me your own ones!

• Sentences in all languages can be templated as easily as in English: {user} is in {location} etc.

• Words that are short in English are short in other languages too.

• For any text in any language, its translation into any other language is approximately as long as the original.

• For every lower-case character, there is exactly one (language-independent) upper-case character, and vice versa.

• The lower-case/upper-case distinction exists in all languages.

• All languages have words for exactly the same things as English.

• Every expression in English, however vague and out-of-context, always has exactly one translation in every other language.

• All languages follow the subject-verb-object word order.

• When words are to be converted into Title Case, it is always the first character of the word that needs to be capitalized, in all languages.

• Every language has words for yes and no.

• In each language, the words for yes and no never change, regardless of which question they are answering.

• There is always only one correct way to spell anything.

• Each language is written in exactly one alphabet.

• All languages (that use the Latin alphabet) have the same alphabetical sorting order.

• All languages are written from left to right.

• Even in languages written from right to left, the user interface still “flows” from left to right.

• Every language puts spaces between words.

• Segmenting a sentence into words is as easy as splitting on whitespace (and maybe punctuation).

• Segmenting a text into sentences is as easy as splitting on end-of-sentence punctuation.

• No language puts spaces before question marks and exclamation marks at the end of a sentence.

• No language puts spaces after opening quotes and before closing quotes.

• All languages use the same characters for opening quotes and closing quotes.

• Numbers, when written out in digits, are formatted and punctuated the same way in all languages.

• No two languages are so similar that it would ever be difficult to tell them apart.

• Languages that have similar names are similar.

• Icons that are based on English puns and wordplay are easily understood by speakers of other languages.

• Geolocation is an accurate way to predict the user’s language.

• Country flags are accurate and appropriate symbols for languages.

• Every country has exactly one “national” language.

• Every language is the “national” language of exactly one country.