Spanish (non-English) language support

[rahji]

I will preface this by saying I don't speak/read/write Spanish (yet): 😂

I was inspired by Quinton's addition of Spanish language coding to q5.js (an arguably better-but-compatible p5.js): https://q5js.substack.com/p/code-in-spanish-with-q5js

I'm interested in adding this to Runal because I feel like it challenges the idea that everyone should be writing code in English. Also, I'm interested in the potential of teaching abroad again next year 🙏🏽 and I think a creative coding class in which students code in Spanish would be a great art class that also serves American students learning Spanish.

Anyway, I think this is only relevant to the CLI/javascript, so it seems like the package could remain untouched and the CLI could intercept calls as it's evaluating the javascript and map the function names like:

funcMap := map[string]string{
    "círculo": "circle",
    "triángulo": "triangle",
    // etc
}

// then...
if enFunc, ok := funcMap[spanishFunc]; ok {
    // call the enFunc
}

We could steal the function names from q5 since I think they probably completely overlap.

Of course the other half is having Spanish documentation, which could maybe start with what q5 has but could be edited/verified/adapted by getting a bit of help from a Spanish-speaker. (I may be able to find an interested student researcher at some point)

If we do it as above, adding French and other languages should be trivial and won't cause extra overhead for the Go package.

What do you think?

[xaviergodart]

I like the idea.

As a non-native english speaker myself, I'm all for challenging the "english everywhere" situation, especially in educational contexts that might be non-tech (art, creation etc...).

The main drawback is see IMO is the code sharing aspect. People might publish interesting stuff using Runal that might be difficult to read by people using different languages.

[rahji]

I hadn't thought of that. Do you think that having a CLI flag that translates and returns the named sketch file (to STDOUT) would address this? eg: runal --lang=en spanishsketch.js

[xaviergodart]

It would partially address this I think. You would still need to download the source and run the translate command, instead of just reading the source from an online repository viewer.

It's still interesting though. I'll let the issue open and see if more people shows interest.

[rahji]

Sounds good. Another thing to consider: not everything is for everyone. I have a grad student who is making paintings that reference racial politics in the Bahamas using some symbols that only Bahamians would know. And that's what her work needs to be able to communicate the ideas she wants to communicate. It's not necessarily for you or me. But there is still much I can engage with in the paintings. I can see an argument that code written in Spanish is written in Spanish and doesn't need to be read in English. And certainly people can still enjoy the finished product without being able to read the code easily. (Also, I think I could read a French or Spanish version of Runal code much easier than i could read Assembly or COBOL) :)