English speakers of the fedi.
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc I'm Irish, so in our language the imperitive "do (it)" is the root of our verbs, whereas across in England "to do" is the root
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc @seachaint Native speaker and, I said imperative but. Oh! Er it's a bit more subtle than that for me.
Menu entries (leaf nodes) are definitely imperative. "Save!" "Open!" "Undo!!".
Menu bar categories ("edit", "format", "view") are infinitive, *except* when navigating the menu where they can take on any form including the noun inside a (usually reverse ordered) verb phrase. "edit, undo", "Format paragraph", "file: open." are all different. -
Iff English is your second language, how are these verbs tusually translated to *your* language in software interfaces?
@eltonfc funny thing is, in Polish, even if they tried to make it infinitive - eg. "Zapisać" - it could still be interpreted as imperative, just more formal / military-style.
But no, they translate it as "Zapisz", which is the friendly / direct type of imperative.
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Iff English is your second language, how are these verbs tusually translated to *your* language in software interfaces?
@eltonfc I can answer this second one: neither :D Hungarian translations settled mostly on nominalising the actions in menus and buttons, thus "saving", "opening" (mentés, megnyitás), instead of statements (ment, megnyit) or imperatives (ments, nyiss meg).
Some items ended up with other nouns: nézet (the view), súgó (prompter, whisperer; for Help)
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc Buttons feel more commandy than menus, but I can't quite fit them well as infinitives in my head - though when I explain someone what to do with what menu, they also don't fully feel like imperatives either.
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Oh, that's very true. Or not even verbs. The "File" menu is a collection of commands which relate to file handling (open, close, etc.), not a command _to file_.
(Although it occurs to me that reading Edit as a verb may be how "Preferences" got stuck there in some standards, even though it doesn't have much to do with other Edit operations cut/copy/paste.)
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc I grew up in the days when all these functions were commands you could enter into the terminal so to me, they're imperative because they're literal command inputs.
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc Wow! The results are interesting. I’m a native speaker and I assumed all native speakers were like me and feel like it is infinitive, but apparently I am in the minority of native speakers. I am more like the majority of second-language speakers. Very interesting indeed.
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@eltonfc I don't know if I speak English at all, because I have no idea what imperative or infinitive should mean in that context 😅
I believe German systems tend to use the infinitive. In English both are "Edit". When you use an English app, which way do you interpret it?
Infinitive: Bearbeiten (Nennform, zu bearbeiten, the idea to edit something, we can edit something, I want to edit something.)
Imperative: Bearbeite [dies] (commanding order: Edit this now. Or maybe first person: I edit this.)
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
As a Dutch person, I read it as infinitive or first person.
Computer: What do you want to do?
Me: I want to edit. I edit something.The computer is an agent extension of me. The computer doesn't do, I do. That's for GUI.
On the CLI and in software development, most functions I use and write myself are imperative (method names tend to be long enough that there's no ambiguity, and some coding convention docs prescribe it explicitly). Open this, remove that, install this.
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc In esperanto it is imperative so that colours my interpretation a bit.
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc There is an ambiguity here. To the user, the word on the button is an infinitive: press the Save button to save, etc. But to the computer, the button is an imperative: I am ordering the computer to Save if I push that. So the answer is viewpoint dependent.
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English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
@eltonfc@bertha.social note that translations to different languages will treat it differently (e.g. russian always uses infinitive, while polish always imperative), so non-native speakers most likely would be biased according to that
For me personally - i initially didn’t think much of it so treated it as infinitive same as in russian, then i realized that some languages actually do use explicitly imperative forms, and so english is probably meant to be that too
(Didn’t vote, queering the binary ig) -
English speakers of the fedi. In a software with the interface in English, Reading a menu with verbs such as Save, Open, Close, Edit, Format etc., do you read them as imperative (an order: "do this") or as an infinitive (the "base form" of the verb, like "to do this")?
Are you a native speaker or have English as a second language?
#Dev #ux #ui #software #interface #translation #uiux #uxui #gui
I answered "infinitive" but only because these don't feel like imperatives. I do not feel like I am commanding the software to *OPEN MY FILE!*
As an aside, I think your expansion of an infinitive-based reading may be misleading since, in English, "to do this" could be read as a declaration of purpose, which is not what the infinitive (or the gerund, come to that) represents.
My feeling is that these labels work just as labels, with it being purely a convenience of space and habit whether they are expressed as verbs or nouns, i.e. Open = "Here is the menu or item that has to do with opening files", but Settings = "Here is the menu or item that has to do with settings".
That's closer to a noun-form for a verb than a command, so it's more infinitive-adjacent than imperative-like, but I think the categories are inappropriate.
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I believe German systems tend to use the infinitive. In English both are "Edit". When you use an English app, which way do you interpret it?
Infinitive: Bearbeiten (Nennform, zu bearbeiten, the idea to edit something, we can edit something, I want to edit something.)
Imperative: Bearbeite [dies] (commanding order: Edit this now. Or maybe first person: I edit this.)
@krinkle @eltonfc now I understand. For me it's clearly the infinitive, because it' more a command of things that I want to do. "I want to Edit -> Rotate something" and less a list of things I want the computer to do for me "please Edit -> Rotate something for me"
But perhaps that's only because the infinitive is the standard in German.
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I answered "infinitive" but only because these don't feel like imperatives. I do not feel like I am commanding the software to *OPEN MY FILE!*
As an aside, I think your expansion of an infinitive-based reading may be misleading since, in English, "to do this" could be read as a declaration of purpose, which is not what the infinitive (or the gerund, come to that) represents.
My feeling is that these labels work just as labels, with it being purely a convenience of space and habit whether they are expressed as verbs or nouns, i.e. Open = "Here is the menu or item that has to do with opening files", but Settings = "Here is the menu or item that has to do with settings".
That's closer to a noun-form for a verb than a command, so it's more infinitive-adjacent than imperative-like, but I think the categories are inappropriate.
@dhobern @eltonfc In my native language it is very clear it's me commanding the machine to "Open my file. Now!"
I've switched to using English in tech as a default long time ago, but I've always read and understood the English options as similar commands, too. (Subconsciously of course, I've never stopped to think about it until now). :D
But it's really interesting to read this chain and suddenly realize we interact with machines differently in our thoughts.
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@eltonfc@bertha.social note that translations to different languages will treat it differently (e.g. russian always uses infinitive, while polish always imperative), so non-native speakers most likely would be biased according to that
For me personally - i initially didn’t think much of it so treated it as infinitive same as in russian, then i realized that some languages actually do use explicitly imperative forms, and so english is probably meant to be that too
(Didn’t vote, queering the binary ig)@alice actuality that's why I made the poll in the first place. Depending on the language, the same English verb is translated in the infinitive or the imperative, depending on the language.
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I answered "infinitive" but only because these don't feel like imperatives. I do not feel like I am commanding the software to *OPEN MY FILE!*
As an aside, I think your expansion of an infinitive-based reading may be misleading since, in English, "to do this" could be read as a declaration of purpose, which is not what the infinitive (or the gerund, come to that) represents.
My feeling is that these labels work just as labels, with it being purely a convenience of space and habit whether they are expressed as verbs or nouns, i.e. Open = "Here is the menu or item that has to do with opening files", but Settings = "Here is the menu or item that has to do with settings".
That's closer to a noun-form for a verb than a command, so it's more infinitive-adjacent than imperative-like, but I think the categories are inappropriate.
@dhobern I guess the noun-form is most likely the intention of (the founding generation of) UI designers, now that youentioned it. And probably that's how it's trans later to the lqngiages7that don't use the imperative form. Good point!
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@dhobern @eltonfc In my native language it is very clear it's me commanding the machine to "Open my file. Now!"
I've switched to using English in tech as a default long time ago, but I've always read and understood the English options as similar commands, too. (Subconsciously of course, I've never stopped to think about it until now). :D
But it's really interesting to read this chain and suddenly realize we interact with machines differently in our thoughts.
@sara in Finnish is it simpler to just write the verb in the imperative? Does have a single form or does ir flex with the person (formal, informal, etc?)
I remember a guy that shoved a whole lexical analyzer in a SNES ROM just to properly translate and decline the player's name in a Finnish translation of Chrono Trigger
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