Mastodawn

i have a question for speakers of different languages regarding how the software you are using expresses the concept of "an action is currently happening" (examples in english: "Downloading updates..." / "Saving report.doc, please wait...")

so far i see the following options, please correct me or provide with additional ones, or info on languages i have not mentioned

#german / #deutsch: passive voice with phrases such as "wird heruntergeladen" (is being downloaded)

#french / #français: nouns corresponding to verbs, such as "lecture" (reading), "téléchargement" (down-/uploading) and "enregistrement" (saving)

#russian / #русский: likewise verbal nouns, such as "чтение" (reading), "загрузка" (loading/uploading), "сохранение" (saving)

#italian / #italiano: verbal nouns ending in -aggio

#japanese / #日本語: verbs ending in 中

#l10n #i18n #translation

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Neo Ehproque

@rnd Spanish: "descargando archivo" , "abriendo archivo" (downloading/opening file". You can have an impersonal form like "the file is being downloaded" "el archivo se está descargando", but I don't think almost anyone bothers with that

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Pablo Rodríguez 1d ago

@ehproque @rnd

#spanish / #español: Verbal nouns ending in -ando or -iendo.

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/dev/urandom 1d ago

@ehproque looking at the dictionary, the -ando suffix forms gerund forms of verbs that function as nouns, so i guess it's similar to french/italian/russian in that respect?

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Neo Ehproque 1d ago

@rnd I don't know any Italian or German, but the French is not equivalent: we use a different tense for the two meanings of reading: we use "leer" for "I like reading" (the activity, which is a noun), and "leyendo" for verbs that are in progress, as in "I'm reading this book" or "the software is reading this file".

Mi french is really limited, but I remember that they use "en train de [verb]" for their equivalent to our gerundio, and the ones you provided are more like "the downloading is happening" rather than "we are downloading"