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I was given the task of coming up with shorter German words for the German version of our software.

It got me to thinking that there should be some sort of standard vocabulary for information technology somewhere. Like there "have to be" terms that most (if not all) German computer users use for what English-speakers call file, database, record, search, search terms, search hits, find and replace, delete, OCR ... you get the idea.

I found ISO 2382 on the ISO Web site, but it only seems to standardize English and French. Is there an equivalent standard for German? How about for Spanish, or for other languages?

Null Pointers etc.
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  • Good luck. Next task ought to be coming up with shorter translations for Russian. You have my sincere sympathy. BTW. If you can give out the name of the company, so we will know which apps *not to use*, that will be great. – Paweł Dyda Jan 08 '13 at 18:26
  • A friend of mine published a German computer dictionary in the 80's. It contained translations of the common terms at that time. But of course the problem is that this field moves so quickly that all of the terms (even in English) are really colloquialisms. (Did you say "record" perhaps you meant "tuple"?) Sorry I can't help you, but my recommendation (weil ich ein hessliches Americaner bin) is to use the English terms directly. – AgilePro Jan 13 '13 at 01:00

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I may suggest this book, although quite dated, was an attempt to come up with a set of standard computer terms for translating from German to English and back:

Grosses IWT-Wörterbuch der Computertechnik und der Wirtschaftsinformatik. Englisch-Deutsch. Deutsch-Englisch

AgilePro
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I will offer up the answer, "no".

Even within English, there are not standard words to describe computer operations as you have presented them. Certainly one can "delete" a file, but they can also "erase" it, "remove" it, an (shudder) "move it to the trash can".

Instead of trying to solve the problem in the large, I suggest you solve the problem in the small. Build a glossary of commonly used German words, and whenever there is an opportunity to expand the Glossary, first look over the existing entries and do your best to reuse the current terminology.

In a way, the reason good English documentation works well is because good writers of English use a glossary like technique explicitly or implicitly. In the event that much of your documentation comes from a single source, or related set of sources, you can make a "translation map" of "when they say X, we say Y". But, even such simplifications often require native readers to re-read the translation in context, as languages are not nearly regular enough to do simple substitution without many pitfalls.

Edwin Buck
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As a starting point, The Open Group (www.opengroup.org) seems to have defined glossaries as part of their work on The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), which appear to be the sort of thing I needed. For example, these document numbers and titles are taken directly from their Web site:

  • C148 TOGAF® 9.1 Translation Glossary: English – Hrvatski (Croatian)
  • C149 TOGAF® 9.1 Translation Glossary: English – Castilian Spanish
  • C146 TOGAF® 9.1 Translation Glossary: English – Portuguese (Portugal)
  • C13H TOGAF® 9.1 Translation Glossary: English – Slovak
Null Pointers etc.
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