Re: Verbs form in UI actions

["Dale Gulledge" <dgulledge gmail com>]

On 12/18/06, Thomas Thurman <thomas thurman org uk> wrote:

On 18/12/06, Dale Gulledge <dgulledge gmail com > wrote:

On 12/18/06, Wouter Bolsterlee <uws+gnome xs4all nl> wrote:

2006-12-17 klockan 17:31 skrev Youssef Chahibi:
>    In what form (Infinitive, Noun, Imperative) are UI actions
> like "Open", "Close", "Show" ... translated in your language?
>    Do you have any idea about what is intended by the verb form in English, is
> Imperative or infinitive?

In English, these words are written as imperatives (spelled the same as
infinitive). However, in Dutch, we stick to infinitives only. Imperative
form is considered bad style and impolite.

I don't know whether it makes any difference in terms of politeness, but I've always interpreted these menu items as imperatives directed at the software.  Thus, the user is commanding the program to perform the action.

I remember I had this argument with a teacher somewhere around 1990 because of the French i18n on our town VAX. The French commands were all infinitives, and I'd thought they should be imperatives because that's what I'd always understood the English commands to be. The teacher maintained that the English commands were infinitives lacking the "to".

I wonder whether most English speakers think of them as imperatives, and what languages other than English don't think of them as infinitives.

I think it is important to keep in mind that none of us are representative of typical English-speaking computer users on this issue.  All of us are users of an open source system that many of us are contributing to.  So we are taking a more active interest in what the system actually does and why.  Even more importantly, this list is about internationalization and localization.  My guess is that nearly everyone reading it is at least bilingual, probably with a moderately high level of fluency.  Even those who aren't are concerned with software internationalization, a topic which touches on liguistics in several ways.

My guess is that most English-speaking users don't pay much attention to what form of the verb is used in menus.  There are three reasons.  The first is that in English, the imperative is the infinitive without the auxiliary word "to" in front of it.  The distinction isn't one that draws much attention to it.  Secondly, menu items are isolated words used without much context.  Finally, regardless of the language, I don't think most users take much time to consider the exact meaning of the text in the menus.  As long as the action performed is what the user wanted and expected, the exact words aren't that important.

- Dale