English speakers of the fedi.

[eltonfc@bertha.social]

@jjj my point is that the same string "Close" is translated to Swedish in the imperative form and to Portuguese in the infinitive form. I'm curious how it's done in other languages.

[leonardof@bertha.social]

@eltonfc 😅

[wordshaper@weatherishappening.network]

@eltonfc tbh as a native english speaker I've gotten to the point where I see those words in menus as *nouns* rather than verbs. (I may have been computering too long, that's a valid observation)

[jjj@functional.cafe]

@eltonfc Ok, I understand now, I think.

The results of your polls are very interesting and surprising to me. I didn't know of this difference.

[drahardja@sfba.social]

@eltonfc I think most verbs in menus are intended to be imperative, with whatever is selected being the noun (eg copy *this*).

[penguin42@mastodon.org.uk]

@eltonfc I don't think in either imperative or infinitive etc - as a native speaker, I just think in terms of knowing the thing I want to do is if I click on the option with that name.

[quixoticgeek@social.v.st]

@eltonfc needs an option "native speaker, doesn't understand the question"

[dveditz@infosec.exchange]

@lritter @eltonfc

fair point. in English those items use the imperative followed by "..." (an incomplete command?). An infinitive would make sense in that context and I could imagine a "To Print" or similar menu, but I've never seen one. The English form used is imperative.

[zygous@toot.community]

@mattdm @virtulis @eltonfc

To me, a Brit, it’s [I want to] Rename File. I had to ponder this, though, because I genuinely wasn’t sure how I think about it, at first. Perhaps with a GUI I’m hoping to do something, whereas with a CLI I can be more confident and use the imperative 😆

[zygous@toot.community]

@Klara @eltonfc
This strikes me as a good example. “Compose“ couldn’t be the imperative because the computer won’t be composing the message: the user will. So by using it you’re expressing a desire not issuing a command.

[witewulf@cyberplace.social]

@eltonfc I’m a native English speaker and I’ve always read them as an infinitive, like “this is the button you press to save”, not as a command/instruction to the computer telling it to save.

[firefly@frogs.lgbt]

@eltonfc this is interesting, I answered (imperative, imperative) but that seems to be in the minority

that said, I think for quite a lot of cases (any ending in -a I think, which is quite common) there'd be a similar ambiguity in Swedish

[eltonfc@bertha.social]

@firefly In portuguese they are in the imperative: "Empurre/puxe" instead of "Push/pull".

@jjj

[peterludemann@mathstodon.xyz]

@penguin42 @eltonfc
Same here, although my thinking might be affected by my second languages (Japanese, French, German - none of them fluent).

Anyway, for a non-European language ...
In my experience, Japanese menu items are usually in the "dictionary form" of the verb (which is kind of like an infinitive but also the same as the non-past plain form); imperative would be longer and much more complex (if you think tu/vous Du/Sie are tricky, that's nothing compared to Japanese). There are also situations where a noun is used - I can expand on this a bit if you wish (most Japanese verbs can be noun-ed and most nouns can be verb-ed, but there are multiple mechanisms); but tl;dr: the shortest form is usually used.

BTW, English menus sometimes have nouns (e.g., "properties", "new window") or words that could be either noun or verb (e.g., "exit", "edit", "format", "help")

[eltonfc@bertha.social]

@firefly well, the push/pull labers are instructions to the person reading them. Computer buttons are instructions that the person reading them is giving to the computer.

I gues a better Analogue would be the label on a physical button that does something, like the ones you press on a bis requesting a stop. Or "Open door"

@jjj

[condret@fedi.absturztau.be]

@eltonfc imperative, but as "if you click here, you command the puter to do this"

[colmdonoghue@mastodon.ie]

@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

[gra@hachyderm.io]

@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.

[wolf480pl@mstdn.io]

@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.

[phl@mastodon.social]

@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)