I’m doing a little pro bono work for an organization in Central America. I’m ok at Spanish and my contacts are perfectly fluent but are not techincal people. Even if they don’t care what I call some fields in a database I still want to make as clean a schema as possible, and I’d like to know what some typical abbreviations are for field / variable names in Spanish.
I understand abbreviations and naming conventions are entirely personal. I’m not
asking for the “correct” or “best” way to abbreviate database object names. I’m just looking for references to lists of typical abbreviations that would be easily recognizable to a techincally competent native Spanish speaker. I believe I am a decent googler but I’ve had no luck on this one.
For example, in my company (where English is the primary language) ‘Date’ is always shortened to ‘DT’, ‘Code’ to ‘CD’, ‘Item’ to ‘IT’, etc. It’s easy for the crowds of IT temp workers who revolve through on various projects to figure out that ‘DT’ stands for ‘Date’, ‘YR’ for ‘Year’, or ‘TN’ for ‘Transaction’ without even having to consult the official abbreviations list.
3
It is nice of you to do this, but preferably write code in english!, otherwise it might be a headache for the next maintainer (even if he/she speaks spanish)
You should ask if it is possible for you to use english for all development since it is the default way most programmers/engineers write code. I would say it is the best practice around and it shouldn’t be that much complicated even for non-english speakers.
Most resources to learn how to program are in english, so chances are most programmers are already exposed to english. Additionally, all language keywords tend to be spanish (except for PHP’s “Paamayim Nekudotayim” compiler token variable, or if you use some wacky spanish compiler).
I am Mexican, and I have never ever written code in spanish, nor I would like to. English has shorter, cleaner, sweeter and more predictable words for programming than spanish.
Take for example the word for year, which is *año*, if you write it with an *n* instead of an *ñ* you would get *ano* which means *anus*.
Additionally, you most probably would have to take off all accents, which —if you have the some sense of grammar— can/will make words sound funny in your head (maybe I’m just a grammar nazi).
Finally, some people just give up trying to find the appropriate name for a variable in spanish and end up writing it in english, so surprise, you now have a bilingual codebase.
P.S.: I would seriously punch someone in the face if I found they were abbreviating variables everywhere and I had to maintain that code… then I would quit.
3
Two thoughts on this one:
1) Why not ask them for an abbreviation that would make sense?
They’ll have to teach the next person what the DB is supposed to be doing anyway, so they might as well provide some input on the abbreviations.
2) Why not use English for the object names and provide them with a list of the abbreviations you use?
The next person down the line may or may not speak Spanish either. English may therefore become the common denominator for this particular project. The project owners can simply forward the next person a copy of the glossary you created.
Of the two, I would suggest the second. English (broken or not) is the common language for IT. If you avoid cryptic terms and document your changes well then the next person shouldn’t have any problems picking up where you left off.
Documentation in this case is more important than creating what you think is a clean schema. The documentation will clue them into your thought processes and will make everything more self-evident.
5
Even though they are a Spanish speaking country, you may be doing them a better favor by using English.
What if they hire Indian consultants to maintain the project? They use English. What if they hire Russians to maintain the project. They use English. What if they hire a Turkish team? They use English. What if they hire an Egyptian team? They use English. What if… English.
For better or worse, English is the language of computing. Using it makes the project accessible to a larger pool of world developers.
This About.com page has a short list and this DropBy.Com page has more entries including business abbreviations. You will probably have trouble with two-letter abbreviations, especially with plurals which double the number of letters already. I’ve seen the word for date (fecha) written as fec for example.
Probably best to write them out completely anyway for better clarity, e.g. “fecha_modificacion”, “fecha_creacion” for “modified date” and “create date”. Put the noun before the modifier as is the convention in Spanish.
That way someone looking at it later could just do a dictionary lookup rather than relying on some special convention (not a bad idea for English DB’s as well).
2