11 Sep
2007
11 Sep
'07
1:19 p.m.
Quite why I'd want illeterates to be connecting cables to my computer i=
s
totally beyond me...
I never can tell with you, Tony, whether you faking it and taking the
mick, being deliberately obtuse to make some kind of point, or
genuinely think in a very strange way.
The point, as I have already spelled out abundantly clearly, is that
someone may be perfectly literate and fluent in multiple languages and
completely unfamiliar with English or even the Roman script.
So?
I don't speak a word of Chinese. I can't read a single Chinese character.
But if computer connectors were labelled in Chinese. I'll bet I could
learn the necessary few chracters in a couple of days _at most_.
[...]
It is much simpler for everyone concerned /all over
the world/ if you
just match the symbol on the end of the cable with the one on the
socket on the back of the computer.
But that's exactly the point. The icons are not stadnardised. I have to
recognise that the symbol that the computer manufacturer uses is, say, a
'prionter' Different manufacturers have different ideas of what symbol to
use.
OK, the user manual _should_ explain that. But you know as well as I do
that manuals go astray. At least if the connectors are labelled with
'words' of a human language, I have a chance to find a dictionary of said
language, or somebody who speaks it, or...
You seem to be in favour of replacing a 'word' that a subset of the
world's population understand naturally ,and which the rest have to
learn, with an icon that nobody understands naturally and that therefore
everyon has to learn. I can't see the benefit in doing that. It's the
same sort of ridiculous idea that caused a bookshop I liked to have to
close down because it couldn't provide wheelchair access. Apparently it's
better that nobody can have access to said books than that a subset of
the population can.
Yes, the word is easier, *in a single country*. But the computer
market is, and has been for many decades, an international one.
And in all other countries the foreign word and the icon _both_ have to
be learnt.
Hint: never wonder why there was a Psion 1, 2, 3 and 5 but not a 4?
Because "4" in Mandarin Chinese - a tonal language where a single
syllable has from 5 to 9 totally different meanings depending on the
tone of voice in which you sing it - Chinese is sung, not spoken - the
word for "4" is the same as the word for "death". You can't
indicate
the tone in non-Chinese writing, so when you write 4, you write death.
A machine called the Psion Death would not sell well, for obvious
reasons. So, Psion skipped the entire number. Almost anyone doing
business in China does the same.
This sounds like an urban legend to me. Like the one about the Chevvy (?)
Nova not selling well in Mexico because 'No Va' means 'it doesn't go'
[To go marginally on-topic, I once used that joke when I pulled most of a
DG Nova 1200 out of a skip. SInce there were bits missing, including the
lights-n-switches board, I said 'Nova -- It doesn't go']
Are you seriously telling me that version 4/model 4/etc of any product
never sells in China????
-tony