🚀 go-pugleaf

Larry Childs wrote:

> The second school says they should not be translated for pragmatic
> reasons:  Why spend the time and money to translate messages that
> 1) are never supposed to be seen in the first place (One assumes that
> program crashes should be           very infrequent), and
> 2) convey very little useful meaning, even if they are translated?  Abend
> messages are often so     technical and full of jargon that no lay person
> understands them, even in the source language.  The     only really
> useful information is the word "ABEND" and the ID number.  As long as
> these are present     in each message, the text of the message is of
> secondary importance.

As we all know, anything that is "never supposed to be seen"
has a tendency to crop up sooner than we expected. If the
user comes to expect translated error messages, a highly
technical message in a foreign language will be bewildering.

Solution? Include a header in the user's language informing
him/her that this is an obscure error, some advice as to
what to do (whom to call?) and that technical information
will follow (which can then be in ~any~ language).

Incidentally, using the word "ABEND" as you suggest, might
confuse German users who expect that word to mean "evening"...

Best regards,

Nils-Erik Gustafsson

ELLEMTEL Telecom Systems Labs	Phone:  +46 8 727 4066
Box 1505 			Fax:    +46 8 647 8276
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