YOUTH MOSTLY PREFER NOT TO TRANSLATE FOREIGN COMPUTER TERMINOLOGY INTO ARMENIAN

ArmInfo
2008-07-28 16:25:00

A considerable part of the youth prefer not to translate computer
terminology into Armenian, Hayk Khanjyan, President of BI LINE,
one of the largest software developers in Armenia, told ArmInfo when
commenting on the results of a poll conducted among 400 students in
Yerevan. To recall, BI LINE is localizing Windows operating systems.

He said respondents were proposed to choose several dozens of
computer terms in Armenian or in a foreign language or to propose
own translation.

‘Although some students proposed rather interesting versions of
translation, most of them preferred foreign terms’, H. Khanjyan
said. Contradictory approaches to translation of terms occurred also
when localizing Windows.

‘Philologists engaged in the work were for translation of as many
terms a possible whereas programmers believed it more expedient leaving
foreign terms without translation for they are more ordinary’ BI LINE
president explained. He said that ordinary users were also given an
opportunity to express their opinion regarding the translations of
terms at the website especially created for them by Microsoft.

The final decision was made to foster Armenian computer lexicon. The
terms successful from the semantic and phonetic point of view were
included in the translation whereas other like ‘dial-up’, ‘macro’,
‘proxy’, ‘media’ and others are to be transliterated.

BI LINE completed the localization of Windows XP in February 2007.