About Translations

As with many languages, Amharic has grammatical gender associated with nouns and pronouns. Amharic also adds gender to verbs, including the imperative commands. Our translators have decided that Scratch commands will be written in the male imperative from.

This decision was initially disputed on the grounds that Scratch programmers could be male or female (which is very true) and therefore commands needed to be double-verbed for both possible genders. Needless to say this was quite cumbersome.

Leulseged saved the day by clarifying that programmers, regardless of their own gender, were giving commands to Scratch. Commands like "Move 10 steps" were then quickly rendered in the masculine imperative "10 እርምጃዎች ሂድ".

Even harder than translation words is translating names for cultural constructs like the ubiquitous word "block". Our student translators informed me early on that Ethiopia children don't play with blocks. I suggested "brick" instead, pointing out the walls of our school. They discussed this option briefly but informed me that bricks are used by adults to construct buildings, not as playthings for children. Children would therefore be unlikely to know this "adult" word.

Leave it to the adults, however, to solve this one: During our Jam Session a parent took one look at the Scratch block "More blocks" and declared "ተጨማሪ ጡቦች". Everyone smiled, nodded agreement, and off we went!