Chinese tranlation of Distributed Programming with Ice (public review version)

weida · June 2004

Hi Chinese Icemen,

Here comes the (partial ) Chinese translation of Distributed Programming with Ice for public review. Currently available contents include Chapter 1 to Chapter 15. To make the bookmarks and hypertext links generated into the PDF file, however, untranslated parts are also included. Apologies to those who are accessing Internet via dial-up connection.

Some points to note:

* The translation is based on Distributed Programming with Ice 1.3.0 for now. The upates from the 1.4.0 version of the book will be merged after the whole translating of 1.3.0 version is done.

* The texts in figures are not translated yet. The comments of source code are not going to be translated since I suppose we (i.e. Chinese programmer) should and usually do comment source code in English. Anyway, my mind could change if many of you are not in favour of English comment like me.

* Though it is not an excuse for bad translation, translating is really a difficult work. So your comment and suggestion can be very valuable to make the final translation satisfactory. Please direct any comment, suggestion, and praise/complain to weida@flyingdonkey.com .

* The last point: I have a strong belief that no one can become a good programmer if she/he can't read tehnical literatures in English directly. Thus a translation such as my work on the Ice book should only be used as a means to assist in your journey into the English programming world, but not an excuse for not improving your reading skill of English - it is a necessity, if you really want to be good at programming!

Thanks and enjoy!

Best Regards,

Weida

lkw · June 2004

Thanks!

Thanks a lot,weida. I am reading!

lkw

dragzhb · July 2004

Hi weida :
your are very good, I not only read the ICE book that you translate ,but alse read the ACE books that you translate. thanks a lot.

weida · July 2004

Thank you, guys. Thank you, dragzhb. I am flattered.

There is an issue I'd like to discuss with all of you. In his e-mail for me, Mr Hongshun Li expressed different opinions from my translations of invoke and invocation. As you know, I have translated them into Chinese word Qi3 Yong4 (ÆíÓÃ) , which is a word coined by me, and Mr Li said it would be better to translate those two words into Diao4 Yong4 (µ÷ÓÃ) or Yuan3 Cheng2 Diao4 Yong4 (Ô¶³Ìµ÷ÓÃ) in case of remotely invoking, since the coined word Qi3 Yong4 may confuse the readers. The reason I coin a new word other than using Diao4 Yong4 is that I want to differentiate invoke or invocation from call in the Chinese text, just as they are different in the English text - I think this difference matters.

Please comment on this issue.

Thanks,

Weida

michi · July 2004

I'm obviously in no way qualified to comment on the style of Chinese text but I figured I could clarify a little here...

I believe I use the terms "invoke" and "invocation" when I talk about a remote call that requires things such as marshaling and call dispatch, whereas I use the term "call" for ordinary local function calls or, alternatively, in contexts where the call might be remote, but where I'm not concerned with the mechanics of the call.

I haven't gone through the book and examined all the places where I used "invocation" or "call". To be honest, I never thought about the distinction between the two terms. (I just write the stuff -- I don't think about it

) But I suspect that you could replace all occurences of "invoke" with "call" without much loss of clarity.

Cheers,

Michi.

weida · July 2004

Thanks, Michi. You just hit the needle. So the matter might be, for the Chinese readers, if the coined word is acceptable. If so, I will keep it; otherwise, I will replace it with "call" in the Chinese text.

Regards,

Weida

jumpaddress · July 2004

Originally posted by weida
Thanks, Michi. You just hit the needle. So the matter might be, for the Chinese readers, if the coined word is acceptable. If so, I will keep it; otherwise, I will replace it with "call" in the Chinese text.

Regards,

Weida

Good, Weida, thank you!

I think QiYong is better than DiaoYong,because Invocation includes not only local call, but remote call. Also I think QiYong is not good enough;)

cmpford · July 2004

This is a good thing!

Thanks a lot!

yinwm · August 2004

I donot think the chinese translation version is good.

Originally posted by weida
There is an issue I'd like to discuss with all of you. In his e-mail for me, Mr Hongshun Li expressed different opinions from my translations of invoke and invocation. As you know, I have translated them into Chinese word Qi3 Yong4 (ÆíÓÃ) , which is a word coined by me, and Mr Li said it would be better to translate those two words into Diao4 Yong4 (µ÷ÓÃ) or Yuan3 Cheng2 Diao4 Yong4 (Ô¶³Ìµ÷ÓÃ) in case of remotely invoking, since the coined word Qi3 Yong4 may confuse the readers. The reason I coin a new word other than using Diao4 Yong4 is that I want to differentiate invoke or invocation from call in the Chinese text, just as they are different in the English text - I think this difference matters.

I read some of the chinese version, but I am sorry to say that the english version is good for me to understand ICE.
Some words are not good. for example, Qi3 Yong4, what's that mean, I have never heard it in IT area. I have to open the english version to get the exact meaning of that.
And some sentences are just like a machine translator's work.

I think I will use the english version to start my study tour.

Chinese version makes me confused.

weida · August 2004

Hi yinwm,

I am sorry to hear that. But indeed, sometimes I do have the same feeling with you: many translated technical books (including mine) are very hard to understand. I think one reason for this is that the translators' (again, including mine) translating skills need to be improved, and another reason is, which many Chinese people would not like to admit, Chinese is not a language suitable for logical thinking and expressing. This is not only true in the computer science, but also in other disciplines - for example, Kant says his philosophy is for average readers, but if I compare the English translation to Chinese translation of his works, I'd say, the English translation may be for average readers, but the Chinese translation is almost for nobody!

On the other side, one who is not a native English speaker can't read English technical books in a day or two. This is where the translated books come into play. Many beginners just need them.

So my opninion is, if you can read English well, there is no point at all for you to read the translated Ice manual. And for those who can't read English well, use the translated version, refer to the English version when the meaning is not clear, and discard the translated version when possible.

As for the term Qi3 Yong4, I've said it's coined by me, so why should you have heard it in the 'IT area'? Coining new word is a common practice in translating. Many words that we now use everyday and would think as 'natural words' are actually coined, such as Fu2 Wu4 Qi4 (server), Yi4 Xing2 (alien), Gao1 Er2 Fu1 (golf) - And for coined words, one thing is for sure: if you don't know what it means this time, you will know next time. Of course, I am not saying that Qi3 Yong4 is necessarily a good term - there are certainly good ones and bad ones in coined words. Again, as I've said, I can replace it with Diao4 Yong4 if you guys prefer Diao4 Yong4 to Qi3 Yong4.

Regards,

Weida

Jonathan · August 2004

Originally posted by weida
Hi yinwm,

I am sorry to hear that. But indeed, sometimes I do have the same feeling with you: many translated technical books (including mine) are very hard to understand. I think one reason for this is that the translators' (again, including mine) translating skills need to be improved, and another reason is, which many Chinese people would not like to admit, Chinese is not a language suitable for logical thinking and expressing. This is not only true in the computer science, but also in other disciplines - for example, Kant says his philosophy is for average readers, but if I compare the English translation to Chinese translation of his works, I'd say, the English translation may be for average readers, but the Chinese translation is almost for nobody!
...

Thanks for your work. It is ok that the translation needs improving. But, it has nothing to do with the Chinese language.

dragzhb · August 2004

I agree with weida, in china ,many people is not very good with english incuding reading and writing, we need people like weida to do these translating work. If your english is very good, I thank you can try to translate any document to contribute your power . don't say that you don't need translating document so that say translating document to chinese is a very bad idea. china's software is very poor beacuse of many people's english is very poor to understand english document!

chenhong_sz · October 2004

Thanks a lot Weida.
As a ICE Beginer and a chinese men. i think a chinese manual is good way to study and understand ICE technology quickly.Maybe the manual is not perfect or not good enough.But I think these are not a matter. when you had understood or had a good feel to ICE.you can find some external ICE resource( e.s English Document or others) to research it. As many chinese ICEMan,your chinese guide is good enough. I think.

teenvoon.RaySir · October 2004

da hanyu pinyin bu keyi mie?

why not Chinese pinyin ar?

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

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Chinese tranlation of Distributed Programming with Ice (public review version)

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