Some years ago, I visited the library to get a C book or two to read while waiting for the one I had ordered from Amazon. The only C book I found, however, was the Swedish translation of Stephen Prata’s C++ Primer. The problem was, though, that I never read computer literature in Swedish (I don’t even know the Swedish word for “encapsulation”) so procrastination ensued. I’d heard some good things about that book, though, so in the end, I had to try, Swedish or not.

But the book felt weird, as if Prata wasn’t really serious about programming. It was as if he had decided to make up the terminology as he went along, and as if I had two foreign languages (computer-Swedish and C++) to master, instead of just one.

And that, I guess, was the real problem. The whole computerised world speaks English, which means that if we need to talk about computing, we need to do it in English or risk not being understood. In Sweden, we’ll invariably borrow from English when discussing anything having to do with computers and IT, even if the main conversation is in Swedish. Sometimes the words are semi-translated and (sort of) accepted, but often we just use the English terminology directly, without even stopping to think about what the corresponding Swedish word might be. Yet nobody cares, because we all seem to agree that the Swedish words are, or at least sound, phoney.

It is a problem, however, one of the curses of the modern western civilisation and shared by every nation with a native language other than English. Precious few see it in that way; most accept the consequences without a second thought, with devastating consequences for their native tongues.

Icelanders have a different approach. The authorities will produce official Icelandic translations for every single new word that pops up in a book, television show or United Nations address. Every single one, and not just for the English ones either. Everything: German, Spanish, Swahili, doesn’t matter what the language is. See, the Icelandic language police regards every foreign influence as potentially harmful and acts accordingly. For example, they never use “television” or “TV”, they use “sjónvarp” (roughly “flying picture”). “Telephone” is “sími” (original meaning: “thread”), and “computer” is “tölvu”.

Cool, isn’t it?

I’m not entirely sure their way is better. The Icelandic market is far too small for translating every new book or film or United Nations address there is, and certainly not immediately, which means that if there is some new and important terminology to learn, it is not translated either. Which in turn means that the foreign-language terminology is actually needed after all if you want to keep up, at least for a transitional period. So, by the time the authorities come up with an Icelandic translation, the English terminology might already be in use and hard to get rid of.

There are not that many Icelanders. How many of them can keep up with the advances of the western computing?

As for me, I now know how to translate “encapsulation” (“datagömning”, which, by the way, is not quite as Swedish a word as it might look to you, dear reader, but that’s another story). It’s not a word I’ll use any time soon. It sounds downright silly.