Post #1621333
2026-03-11 04:08 UTC
Replies (19)
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@mk_rexx@metalhead.club 2026-03-11 06:14
@eltonfc That's the neat part! They don't.
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@jenesuispasgoth@pouet.chapril.org 2026-03-11 06:21
@eltonfc I mean, if by infinitive you mean it has to have "to" on front of the verb ("to save" etc.), then mechanically, the English version is "imperative," while my interpretation is "infinitive" because in French it's translated as such. If not, then it's infinitive for both.
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@RC_1290@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-11 08:23
@eltonfc Yes
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@torf@c.im 2026-03-11 08:55
@eltonfc I've chosen "infinitive in my language", which is mostly true, but sometimes they are translated as nouns. And I hope "second language" which sounds very vague for me means plainly "foreign", i.e. "not unconsciously learned in childhood".
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@santi@gone.lema.org 2026-03-11 09:25
@eltonfc Interesting yet unsurprising results already. I suspect the reason translations at least in Latin languages went for the infinitive is because they just wouldn’t know what form/person to use. French would look weird in imperative: (Tu) Enregistre (Vous) Enregistrez Recently French online shops decided to go with « Je confirme » or « Je commande », as in present tense for “I confirm” , “I order” for actions. Anyways as always when it gets too complicated latin languages settle down on infinitive (Enregistrer).
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@virtulis@loud.computer 2026-03-11 09:28
@eltonfc oh, that's an interesting question. I never really thought about it and I think it... explains some things? Do I understand correctly, the question is whether I interpret "close" as "i want (the computer) to close the file" versus "computer, close the file"? Because now I realize i've never ever talked to a computer the way people talk to chatbots and maybe that's one of the reasons it feels really weird. Well, in addition to all those other reasons. So yeah, infinitive in every case and every language for me. I'm communicating a desire for a thing to be done, not giving orders. Edit: and yeah, at least in Latvian and Russian it is and always was infinitive. Saglabāt, сохранить, etc. Never even crossed my mind it's completely ambiguous in English.
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@jjj@functional.cafe 2026-03-11 12:31
@eltonfc I don't understand the question. But in Swedish, the "Close" alternative would be "Stäng", which is an imperative. The infinitive would be "Stänga".
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@tusharhero@mathstodon.xyz 2026-03-11 12:48
@eltonfc I have simply never used computer interfaces with my native language, so I can't say.
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@leonardof@bertha.social 2026-03-11 15:27
@eltonfc quer resposta em português também??
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@firefly@frogs.lgbt 2026-03-11 20:53
@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
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@wolf480pl@mstdn.io 2026-03-12 00:28
@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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@phl@mastodon.social 2026-03-12 01:10
@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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@Steveg58@aus.social 2026-03-12 05:14
@eltonfc Having worked with a bunch of Germans, Prussians speaking English use imperatives all the fucking time and don't seem to understand what they are doing or why it might be bad. Bavarians OTOH use English like a normal speaker so it isn't something inherent to translating German to English.
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@janneke@todon.nl 2026-03-12 06:31
@eltonfc One of the many reasons I don't use local language settings.
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@geoliberal@mastodon.social 2026-03-12 08:23
@eltonfc Example of imperative in English, infinitive in Spanish. Conjugation in Romance languages can get complex and the infinitive offers a way to describe the action while minimising accidental complexity. This will always be useful, but it was probably essential in the resource constrained environments of the 70s and 80s where UIs were born.
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@guilevi@comunidad.nvda.es 2026-03-12 08:51
@eltonfc This is really interesting to me because I speak both Catalan and Spanish natively, and in Catalan they are translated primarily as imperative and in Spanish as infinitive
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@flxtr@social.tchncs.de 2026-03-13 20:43
@eltonfc In my language, these verbs are translated into the infinitive form. I still interpret them as commands, however, because commands whose addressee is not specified are formed using the infinitive.
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@wyrquill@polyglot.city 2026-03-13 23:01
@eltonfc It's not my native language, but fun fact: in Modern Greek they are usually translated as nouns, as Greek doesn't have proper infinitives (although there is a non-finite construction). But once in a while they use the imperative too.
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@yabellini@rstats.me 2026-03-13 23:21
@eltonfc Most of the time, there is no translation, so it will be in English....