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* Posts by 4gats

6 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Feb 2015

Gun-jumping French pols demand rapid end to English in EU

4gats
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Re: Die beste Sprache

It depends a lot of the generation.

I.e. in the Central Europe the older people speak rather German, the young ones speaks almost always English as their first foreign language but German is usually their second foreign language (if any). e.g. it's the case of Poland, Hungary etc.

It depends also of the country/region, e.g. in Romania many 45+ years old peaple speak also French, even in boondocks (it had a special place in the "traditional" Romanian education), but the young people default to English.

The French is usually perceived as totally useless.

BTW, I'm a FR-PL translator, this approach is a blessing for me :-)

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4gats
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Re: Just to be a complete contrarian.......

Well, I'm Polish and I have some family in Ireland.

They say they're too old (and, honestly speaking, probably too busy...) to learn the Irish but they're really proud their children learn and speak Irish and encourage it..

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For pity's sake, you fool! DON'T UPGRADE it will make it worse

4gats
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Re: Why aren't Word shortcuts made to work in the rest of Windows...

Because they're Word shortcuts :-)

The right (i.e. universal) solution is to use some keyboard shipped with OS (often not defined by default) or some available external layout, one may find incredible layouts over the Web, e.g. Futhark and old English ones on languagegeek (google for "languagegeek Fuþark").

You can even create your own layout if really necessary, google for "Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator".

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4gats
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Re: Windows' pre-supplied US-International keyboard layout works great for French ...

I use the US International layout for French for translation from eternity :-)

Compared to the standard AZERTY layout for French (France), it's a little bit slower (two strokes for most letters with diacritics except accent aigu with AltGr) but:

- it's very easy to learn and use in mulltilingual scenarios (unlike the AZERTY).

- it's far more flexible (you can also type diacritics for Spanish, Italian, German, Scandinavian languages etc.);

- it's compatible with the US layout which is widely used as a basis for many other layouts (e,g, Polish "programmers"),

Of course, it's a lot of Windows keyboard layouts which handle diacritics e.g. Canadian ones, they may meet better the needs/habits of your wife, just make some research...

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4gats
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Re: US International layout (Windows) ... corporate policies...

Yes, I see all these corporate policies may be impossible or hard to overcome but in the translation related environments one has usually more liberty.

Even in a very stupid I.e. one may explain he really needs these French, Polish etc. letter when translating to French, Polish etc.

Of course, it may take some time :-)

And it depends heavily of the society and typical tasks of the employee.

E.g. in Autodesk I worked for many years ago I had almost an absolute freedom to configure my workstation in order to meet my very specific needs but I imagine a standard bank clerk or a salesman has far less power there.

Ad 4.

True, the US case is extreme but it's not only US related problem.

E.g, you probably can't even imagine how many CAT (computer aided translation) programs handle incorrectly AltGr (for diacritics) vs Alt+Ctrl in shortcuts...

In the CAT software context it's simply a prove of extreme stupidity and/or lack of competence of programmers.

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4gats

US International layout (Windows)

In Windows, you can use the US International layout, it works in this way,

E.g. I type:

' then e, I receive é

^ then e, I receive ê

- then space, I receive apostrophe

etc.

AFAIK this layout permits to type (almost?) all the characters used in the Western European languages (e.g. including Icelandic), no need to learn several layouts :-)

So e.g. I declare French as input language but I select US International keyboard (I hate the AZERTY layout).

For Greek letters, I use the Greek polytonic layout, it's very intuitive.

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