IMHO the (in)consistency problems pointed out by
Artur are not specific to Gretl, but depend
upon the peculiar way in which scientific terms and they
acronyms are sometimes ported in non-english jargons from
English.
Yes! And at some point you have to ask if it's worth introducing some non-english terms at least for those most common acronyms. Getting back to gretl, this is for instance what I'm trying (timidly) to do with gretl's albanian translation. Research publications from the Central bank of Albania, the National statistics office and other locally-based economic research groups widely use translated descriptions and acronyms but university textbooks still heavily use english ones instead. So I'm always mixed-up where to find the right balance between these two different experiences.
For instance, in italian OLS is referred to verbally as such,
with the English acronym, or with the full Italian name "Minimi
Quadrati Ordinari" (possibly in the short version "Minimi
Quadrati" which takes for granted "Ordinari").
Nobody dreams
of saying or writing the acronym MQO(*).
That's really surprising to me indeed! I tend to compare with french-speaking teaching and experience of econometrics :)
This happen in other disciplines as well. For instance Covid-19
tests are made using "Polymerase Chain Reaction", PCR, which in
Italian is "Reazione
a catena della polimerasi"... PCR.
And I think that for such "complicated" things the use of the original English acronym does make sense.
Bottom line: in Italian full names should be
translated but acronyms should not. How about other languages?
From this end, I'm sure that our french-speaking friends would not appreciate an "OLS" acronym instead of "MCO". Indeed, you find no french econometric courses or textbooks where OLS, WLS, GLS, GMM, MLE... are not "in french", both as a label and an acronym. :)
(*) the only example I know is a translation of Hamilton's book
with all the acronyms translated - reading it drives you crazy.
All the best,
Artur