[Localization] The virtue of being fuzzy...

[Xavier Alvarez]

Spiky,

Either I'm not fully awake or I'm confused at your interpretation 
of the fuzzy-ness tag... When you say:

Y.> ...it is difficult to assign only one
Y.> Japanese word without seeing the context.
Y.> (i.e, Is this word used in the menu bar? or in the explanation
Y.> of some help messages, and so on...)

For me that is *exactly* the sort of place where the tag should 
go: the translator is not sure about its appropriateness, 
universality, wording, context of use, etc. and thus tags it.

When you follow the "Quick Translate" links (of a file or 
project), Pootle will cycle all the messages that are either 
blank / untranslated together with those tagged as fuzzy. This 
gives you the chance to see and/or change them. If a translation 
has not been tagged as fuzzy, you will fail to 'have a second 
chance' and you will have to go through the *whole* file...


Cheers,
Xavier

On Monday 03 December 2007 21:40, Y.Sonoda wrote:
Y.> Hi, Xavier!
Y.>
Y.> In my situation, ( and it may be a specific situation for
Y.> Japanese as a language...), I guess there are several reason
Y.> that we can not tag as "fuzzy".
Y.>
Y.> And I think one of the biggest issue is that it is slight
Y.> difficult to translate the "words" only looking at 
Y.> themselves. 
Y.> In Japansese ( and I guess it can be said to most of the other
Y.> languages), there are so many words which stands for one
Y.> simple English word depending on the context in which this
Y.> word is used.
Y.>
Y.> That's why, in some cases, it is difficult to assign only one
Y.> Japanese word without seeing the context.
Y.> (i.e, Is this word used in the menu bar? or in the explanation
Y.> of some help messages, and so on...)
Y.>
Y.> The systematic mechanism for the translation Pootle produced
Y.> for us is simply wonderful. It is very easy to use for even
Y.> the people who are not familiar with IT matters.
Y.> But I felt we need some kind of contextual information in
Y.> which situation the concerned word is used. That will
Y.> considerably help us.
Y.>
Y.> I guess this is the one reason for the difficulty to assign
Y.> "fuzzy" tag to the words. (Speaking about Japanese, there's
Y.> not so much words translated yet thought...I've felt when I
Y.> was doing TEST(Etoys) translation.)
Y.>
Y.> Best regards,
Y.> Spiky
Y.>
Y.>
Y.> 2007/12/1, Xavier Alvarez <xavi.alvarez at gmail.com>:
Y.> > People,
Y.> >
Y.> > I've been noticing that very few translations make use of
Y.> > the "fuzzy" tag (if ever).
Y.> >
Y.> > I seriously doubt that all the terms have a perfect
Y.> > corresponding term and that the translations need no
Y.> > review. I also think that we are losing the oportunity to
Y.> > generate a more collaborative environment & translator
Y.> > community.
Y.> >
Y.> > Remember we all have our own background experiences &
Y.> > idiomatic biases... what may seem 'natural' or 'obvious'
Y.> > to you may not be the case for a child some kilometers
Y.> > away... :)
Y.> >
Y.> > We should probably have a space in the wiki to discuss
Y.> > terminology and translation matters, but haven't been able
Y.> > to think much about a reasonable way to address the
Y.> > multiple issues (source file, source term, target
Y.> > language, alternatives, errors, bugs, etc) in a simple
Y.> > way...
Y.> >
Y.> >
Y.> > Comments? Ideas?
Y.> > Xavier
Y.> >
Y.> > --
Y.> > XA
Y.> > =========
Y.> > Don't Panic!  The Answer is 42
Y.> > _______________________________________________
Y.> > Localization mailing list
Y.> > Localization at lists.laptop.org
Y.> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization
Y.> >
Y.> _______________________________________________
Y.> Localization mailing list
Y.> Localization at lists.laptop.org
Y.> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/localization
Y.>

-- 
XA
=========
Don't Panic!  The Answer is 42