What are software bugs called in other languages?
I realized today that "bug" is a pretty idiomatic term. Are there parallels in other languages? How do you refer to a software bug in your native language?
I've seen mostly ⟨bug⟩ in both Italian and Portuguese. Uncommonly ⟨erro de programação⟩ (PT) / ⟨errore di programmazione⟩ (IT).
I pronounce it ['bu.ge] in both languages, although the pronunciation might vary quite a bit in Portuguese; the last vowel can be [e ɪ i ə] or non-existent, depending on the dialect. It's just epenthetic, given neither language likes hard codas.
In French (France and Quebec), people use "bogue" (even though they tend to pronounce it like "bug"). It means "burr", aka the spiky chestnut hull.
To debug is "déboguer", which only means to debug (and not opening/removing the chestnut burr).
Alternatively, "défaut" is also used (defect). Sometimes the more general "erreur" (error) can be used.
However, the English word "bug" is getting used more and more (along with "débuguer", the French way to turn "to debug" into something usable in the language).
In Hebrew it's mostly bug (באג).
However there is an official translation "teqel" (תקל). It is a derivative of a root that means "to stumble". It suggests a resolvable setback more than an "error".
In many of them it's still "bug". Just like computer is still computer or some version thereof. A lot of newer and technical words are copied or transcribed from English instead of being translated.
In Russian, it’s the same word, transliterated as “баг". And the same is true for “feature”: it’s also transliterated directly to “фича".
I'm not a fluent German speaker, but my amateur sense is that word forms of "fault", "mistake", "failure" are used in German instead, e.g. fehl and Software-Fehler.
There are also several verbs:
"To make a bug": BUGATA.
"To act erroneously because of a bug": BUGITTAA.
"To have habit of causing bugs or acting errorneously": BUGAILLA
In the USA we call them "features".
In Malay, it's officially called "pepijat". Debug is "nyahpepijat". It sounds jarring because it means "insect", and "reverse insect".
So most of the time we just use the word bug, and it's a third of the syllable count.
Interestingly the word clicks a lot better with the other English use of "bug", which is to sneak a microphone into a room.
From a poetic angle, "pijak" means step (on). I don't know if that's the etymology, but it evokes the idea that "pepijat" is something with a lot of little steps and something you want to step on.
With a computer bug, you can't really step on it, but with a microphone bug you can.
In Polish it's singular "błąd" and plural "błędy". Today people also often refer to them as simply singular "bug" and plural "bugi".
Brazilian Portuguese: mostly is called "boogie", our garbled pronounciation for bug.
Sometimes is called "erro" (error) or "defeito" (defect).
In Danish I would use the word “fejl”, which translates to mistake/error/glitch.
In Faroese it is “lús” (lice) which refers to a “villa” (mistake) or “brek” (defect) in software, according to the dictionary. I would personally refer to a bug as “villa” or “feilur” which is the same as the Danish word “fejl”.
To debug is to “kemba” (comb), and debugger “kembari” (comber, if that is a word, someone who combs).
I use to work for an Indian company in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The language there is Marathi. So the employees used Marathi words for some programming terms e.g. "palala" for "ran" or "palav" for "run it" i.e. "program palala/palav" or "program adakla" for "program is stuck", or if the application release is given go ahead by the QA teams, then "yogya" for OK :) And if there was a bug, then the engineers/QA teams used the sentence "barobar naahiye" i.e. it is not correct. The verbatim word for "bug" was not used. The verbatim word for "bug" in Marathi language would be "kidaa" or "paakhroo" :)
In German, they're indeed and usually just called "bugs", too, which of course is an anglicisation. Truly natively, they're called a "Fehler", which can translate to either "error" or "mistake".
In Japanese you can use the word "enbug", as an antonym for "debug".
es-ar: "bug" we usually mix technical words in English in the middle of sentences in Spanish. The correct word in Spanish is "error" (the phonetics is something like "eh-rrohr"), but it's a generic word for errors, not only software bugs.
My guess is that the other countries in America that speak Spanish use this mix, but in Spain they may use the translated version.
I've never really thought of "bug" as being very idiomatic (at least, no more than other words).
The origin of the word "bug" doesn't come from the insect sense of the word. Bug has roots in a word "bogey" meaning devil. You still see its remnants in words like bugbear and bugaboo.
In Japanese it's バグ ("bagu"), "a fault or defect in a computer program".
A funny slang term is バグる ("baguru") - it's an artificially constructed verb that means "to behave buggily", often used to describe when a game or software glitches.
Here is Greece we just call them bugs (we use the English word, not any transitions).
Just reading a bug report this morning, the word used was "falla".
Spanish. South America.
German:
- "Ich habe einen bug", "Da ist ein Fehler"
- "Da ist ein glitch"
- Ein typo
In Costa Rica and other Latin American countries at least we called it, colloquially, “pulga”
Bugg in Swedish, it is basically the same word only pronounced as "boog"
In BASIC `undocumented feature'!