--- title: "Mortal Sin: Translating technical terms" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/10/mortal-sin-translating-technical-terms.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/10/mortal-sin-translating-technical-terms.html" published: "2004-03-10T17:57:00" updated: "2004-03-10T17:57:00" tags: [".Net Original"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "We've all seen this (if you work in a country where English is not your mother tongue). A new person joins your team, and starts talking to you about really deep, thought provoking, mind numbing technical stuff. The…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Mortal Sin: Translating technical terms By Roy Osherove March 10, 2004 In [.Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original) **Historical article** · Originally published March 10, 2004; technical details may be outdated. We've all seen this (if you work in a country where English is not your mother tongue). A new person joins your team, and starts talking to you about really deep, thought provoking, mind numbing technical stuff. The only problem is that you have **absolutely no idea** what they are talking about. Yes, they're speaking in your language, but they are not speaking **the language**. The technical language of computing, and programming in particular, is _English_. It's not Hebrew, Spanish, or French. Try to convert the technical terms to your mother tongue and you get into bizarre, and I mean _bizarre_ words that have no connection what so ever to the technical terms in question. In Hebrew it comes out horribly horribly bad. A small example I'll give here: “**Class**” - to Hebrew “Mahlaka” - to English back again would be... “**platoon**” or “**division**” “**string**” to Hebrew “mahrozet” - to English would be “**Necklace**” “**Member**” to Hebrew “eivar” - back to English would be “**Organ**” or “**limb**“ and so on.... That's why whenever I get to see someone fresh out of CS with no experience, I get into “translation mode” where I have to think about each word spoken twice; Think of it's meaning in Hebrew,  then **try (**not always works!**)** translate back to English to get the _real_ meaning. SO, this sin is exceptionally bad because: - You speak a different language than everyone else. _Too bad_. Communication is key in a development environment. - Everyone will laugh at your funny words. - **You will not understand anyone else!** **Solution:** - Insist on reading literature in English. You're gonna write in English anyway, might as well.. umm... learn it? - Whenever you hear a non English technical term, request the English meaning of it, and see if you can get the instructor to say the original term instead. If not, write it down and learn it on your own. - **Always** use the original terms when speaking with others. - “Infect” other people with this bug. - If you get annoyed with it, it means it's rubbing off on you. Good. _Notes:_ This sin automatically extends the “Technical literature in Non-English” sin. They are two symbiotic entities. If you see one of them, you are likely to see the other, to some extent. ## More in .Net Original [All posts in .Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original) - Mar 17, 2004 ### [My talk went very well. You missed out :)](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/17/my-talk-went-very-well-you-missed-out.html) - Mar 16, 2004 ### [See me speak at IVCUG about Regex and .Net Plug-ins](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/16/see-me-speak-at-ivcug-about-regex-and-net-plug-ins.html) - Mar 10, 2004 ### [Logging block: RTFM](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/10/logging-block-rtfm.html) - Feb 26, 2004 ### [ILdotNet - Israel's .Net User Group Information Center](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/2/26/ildotnet-israels-net-user-group-information-center.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/