Re: How can we change the keyboard layout?
On Tue, 2024-02-06 at 13:07 +0100, Ralph Aichinger wrote:
> On Tue, 2024-02-06 at 12:47 +0100, hw wrote:
> > 'Strg' doesn't belong on a key. It's 'Ctrl'. There is no German
> > translation for that, and calling it 'Steuerung' is plain wrong. A
> > more correct translation would be 'Kontrolle', and it is also wrong
> > for this key. If someone says 'String' that only shows that they
> > have
> > no clue what they're talking about.
>
> No, actually "Steuerung" is a/the correct translation of "control":
No, it isn't when you understand what it means in German. See, for
example:
https://www.dwds.de/wb/Steuerung
https://www.wordnik.com/words/control
https://www.dwds.de/wb/Kontrolle
And don't forget the difference between 'Steuerung' and 'Regelung',
see here for an example:
https://www.haustechnikverstehen.de/der-unterschied-zwischen-steuerung-und-regelung/
> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/german-english/steuerung
too many cookies
> Yes, in some contexts "Control" can also mean "Kontrolle", but more
> often than not it is a "false friend".
In any case, it doesn't mean 'Steuerung'. It might be best if we were
to find out how it came about that there is a key labled 'Ctrl',
meaning 'control', on keyboards, and what the intention originally
was.
> [...] These characters are meant not to print letters, but to
> control stuff (make the bell go "pling", return the carriage) etc,
> "sie sollen Geräte steuern".
They are not characters but key combinations to control a computer in
lack of designated keys. As to 'Geraete steuern' see above. There's
a particular meaning to 'Steuern' when it comes to that context, and
it's very different from 'Kontrollieren'. There's also 'ein Fahrzeug
steuern'. You would have to argue that the key must not be labled
'Ctrl' but 'Steer'.
> I do completely agree with you, that especially Microsoft made
> some truely bad decisions in creating German translations for
> concepts that are expressed much more elegantly in the English
> original.
I'm not sure that Microsoft did that. Maybe they hired translators to
do the translations since Microsoft doesn't speak German ...
> But translating "Ctrl" to "Strg" (if you do not read it as "String
> or even "Strange" as some people do) is not one of these. Yes, the
> choice the Swiss made with just printing "Ctrl" on the key was probably
> better.
It's bad. And like I said, German keyboards used to have the Ctrl
key. It was only changed to 'Strg' a long time later so nobody knows
anymore what it means. It was a very bad idea, entirely unnecessary
and is designed to make people stupid.
> That said, and to be at least somewhat more on-topic: Most of my
> systems are in en_GB locale, but I've found the German translations
> of Debian to be worlds better than their Microsoft counterparts.
Microsoft translated Debian documentation?
It's been decades that I tried to read Debian man pages or other
documentation in German, and back then, the translation was terrible
and I switched to English. Even if there are now better translations,
I'd probably be a very awkward reading and I'd have to keep trying to
translate it back to English while reading to figure out what it's
trying to say.
Out of curiosity, what does Debian translate 'segmentation fault' to?
What it means is evident in English. In German, the whole background
required to understand it does not exist.
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