<rant>
Some time ago, Gabor and I had a disagreement regarding the value of translating programming articles to languages other than English.
In a nutshell, having actually worked as a translator (Danish↔︎Turkish and English↔︎Turkish, including a stint translating for CTW producers Sesame Street episodes written by Turkish writers for the Turkish version), I am quite familiar with what happens when people attempt to translate meaning by looking up terms in a dictionary.
I am afraid, Perlde scalar ve list bağlam, bir dizinin boyutu (English original) forms a good example of why such translations are not only not useful, but also harmful.
I am sure Kadir Beyazlı put in a lot of good work into the translation, but the result is an abomination.
The grammar error in the first word of the title is repeated throughout the body of the post.
More importantly, look at that title again:
Perlde scalar ve list bağlam, bir dizinin boyutu
Is that Turkish or English?
Having failed to find good terms to replace scalar and list, the translator decided to keep using the English words. How does that help a person who supposedly doesn’t understand English, and, therefore, would be reading this translation? For all she knows, we could have used pony and rabbit, instead of scalar, and list, and, so long as the substitution was consistent, she would get the same benefit out of reading this.
If you look at the English-Turkish Math Dictionary, scalar is translated as sayısal which actually means numeric, which kinda works when we are talking about an array in scalar context, but then fails when we say “a reference is a scalar.”
Let me state this unequivocally: The Turkish language has been impoverished over the past century by the blind culling of words of Arabic, Farsi, and in some instances Hebrew origin (although, at least Eylül is still Eylül) in some blind drive towards purification of the language following Atatürk’s reforms. Blind importation of words from English and French did not help either (Turks cannot distinguish among the meanings of the word economy in “the Turkish Economy”, “the Economics Department,” and “economy class” — which saddens me. Hint: “Türkiye Ekonomisi”, “İktisat Bölümü”, and “ucuz bölüm”.
I am happy I did not have to learn to write Turkish in Arabic alphabet, but every time I think of my grandfather Dr. Şinasi Kıpçak’s vocabulary, mastery of the language, I am filled with both nostalgia and envy.
Coming back to how to translate scalar and list context to Turkish …
Here, as in many cases, the translator must think about what words express the meanings of those phrases most consistently and usefully.
To me, the answer is clear: Scalar context in Perl refers to situations where something is interpreted as just one thing.
So, a translation of that title that actually conveys the meaning instead of doing a simple hash lookup might be:
Perl programlarında tekli ve çoklu bağlam: Bir dizinin elemanlarının sayısı
whose literal translation back to English would be “Scalar and list context in Perl programs: The number of elements in an array.” I believe such a translation conveys a whole lot more meaning to a person who actually does not speak English.
Moving on, we have:
Mesela “left” kelimesi birçok anlam içerir:
I left the building.
I turned left at the building.
Why use English examples to explain how we can deduce the meaning of homonyms from context? How does someone who does not speak English get anything out of that?
Why not use a simple Turkish example?
Karı küredim.
Karı-koca.
I am willing to bet the sentence “Çözümü SCALAR bağlamda veri döndüren scalar() fonksiyonunu kullanmaktır” does not make any more sense to a Turkish speaker who speaks no English than “The solution is to use the scalar() function that will create SCALAR context for its parameter.”
Translation and hash-lookup are different things. If you want to convey meaning, you have to have a command of both languages, and the subject matter. Without that, you are only going to add to the word soup. Translating “big event” as “büyük okazyon” helps no one.
I am sure both Kadir and Gabor had the best of intentions with these translations. I just happened to notice that their collaboration happened to produce a translation that highlights everything that a non-English speaking aspiring programmer has to fight with.
In my experience, trying to learn programming from translated technical writings is a fool’s errand. One would be far better off picking up a little English, watching movies with subtitles, and reading a great book such as Learning Perl. When doing so, consult mostly an English-English dictionary. Stick with it for about six months, through thick and thin, and you’ll be amazed how much better your results will be through that process rather than fighting through:
Şu an bir dizinin SCALAR bağlamdaki değerinin eleman sayısı olduğunu biliyoruz. Ayrıca eğer ki dizi boş ise bu değerin 0 (that is FALSE) olduğunu, 1 veya daha fazla eleman içeriyor ise pozitif bir sayı (that is TRUE) olduğunu da biliyoruz.
Allah rızası için, sen n’apıyorsun yav gözümün içi??? “That is” ifadesini o bağlamdaki karşılığı Türkçe’de “yani” dir. Ayrıca niye “şu an”? Bi de Perl’de olacak başlıktaki.