Pedro: "I've realised that it's not consensual the usage of Interaction Design in English in all languages. >From the IxDA point of view what's the most correct?"
Elizabeth: " I don't think it's an industry decision so much as a cultural or linguistic one, depending more on the target language and audience than the sector in question." Pedro: " our community in Lisbon arrived into a consensus, we will maintain the original English version name." ------------------------ Pedro, I find it a bit concerning that by taking a set of translations of one single publication, some of us, Portuguese-speaking IxD professionals might end up vouching for a consensus based on a logical mould that had it been employed in IxD itself would be considered too biased to yield any fruitful conclusions. What brings us to the core of the theme of professional ownership of an area: IxD/HCI/Usability cannot own the answers for linguistic questions, firstly because there has already been tomes and tomes of research published on linguistics combined with every other human science under the sun such as psychology, sociology and politics, and, secondly, all these studies point to the not very surprising conclusion that most individuals understand concepts better and faster in one given natural language, generally their mother tongue or the tongue they have more exposure than in a language they have less exposure; even if they were brought up in bilingual homes, they will still side to a language they feel psychologically comfortable. It really scares me how difficult it is for the Portuguese-speaking digital intelligentsia in both sides of the Atlantic, generally composed by us white, male, middle-class, bilingual folks to understand language and tongue as the first gateway to accessibility and consequently usability and usefulness for the rest of our audiences (to hell with the audiences, being pragmatic: to our own families is a good start (can our children and parents at least pronounce, without feeling ashamed or awkward for their own ignorance, the name of the job we do in life?)). Here we are in a profession whose foundations are based on user-centredness and reinstating users' control of their environment, and the first thing we do is to enclose ourselves behind a language barrier. Should doctors, after almost a decade of studies, expensive university fees and learning materials, tell their patients about their diseases in Latin and Greek terminology as they were taught in first place? We are definitely getting it all wrong in the Portuguese-speaking world because lots gets lost in translation, in our own translation of what is right and wrong and of what is consensus and common sense. The positive trade-off of using terminology (so easy to translate, by the way: design de interação, or as you say in European Portuguese, design de interacção, there you have it) in foreign language is not consensus and union but mainly a personal feeling of being at the top of the world with a job title that most people cannot even pronounce, at the sacrifice of all other speakers (i.e. the users). We glamourise the hermetism of the non-translated simplicities; the obvious truth we turn magical with the cheap trick of hiding the keys behind our backs and offering the curious the minute keyhole of a box for a 2-second glimpse plus the invoice. We want to be included in the creation of everything in the world but when time calls for the help of professionals of the areas we are failing, we can be as amateurish as those who don't hire us for their "oh-it-is-so-going-to-flunk" projects and decide to come up with the solutions ourselves, sometimes even as a Synedrium. Oh, yeah, we love the power of being the godblessed Portuguese-speaking oracles and reincarnations of Alan Cooper, Norman and Nielsen, Jared Spool, Jesse James Garrett, Robert Hoekman Jr. and every other name I can glance in my book shelves from my desk, we not only speak like they speak, we also prefer to speak the language they speak, even if by doing that we contradict the most basic principle of this whole industry: make it easy for the users. We are the ones who know the only correct spelling of the name of God, we can recite Pi to its last foot, but we are not telling it so easily. If one happens to know it as well, the consensus is to do as scribes of a technological Zion and keep it foreign; let's keep it as old Hebrew, withholding the vowels so that only the literate and holy can read them and know exactly what it is all about. Our mass is in Latin. Let's keep it omertà and laugh while the idiots guess what a "usabilisation engictect" is, but not before splitting our sides watching them trying to get the pronunciation right, it is going to be Fawlty Towers all over again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8DngrgIpS0 . After all, what are we doing in the Portuguese world? Forfeiting the pearls from the pigs or actually burying the talents the lord trusted us? "Right, people you have to tell me these things, okay? I've been frozen for thirty years, okay? Throw me a frickin' bone here!" - Doctor Evil, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Cheers, Luis ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
