[Localization] The virtue of being fuzzy...

[Carlo Falciola]

Xavier,

First of all thanks a lot for pointing me to the HUG
docs that look exceptionally precious.

For the "Mesh" I was nursing the idea not to translate
because it seems a term that will soon have a semantic
 value as itself, like "WWW" as example, or "file" (I
still remember an IBM PC manual back in the eighties,
in which  thay translated all file in a really weird
italian "catalogo" that never holds the same meaning
as the original counterpart).
Anyway I think that we should set up some kind of
coordination on the "not to translate" terms (if any).

> When in doubt, I usually hit Wikipedia 
>and then follow the links into Spanish...

My approach was also to setup a QUEMU emulator for the
OLPC in order to see the real contest of strings.   

ciao e grazie
Carlo 


Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 10:15:05 -0300
From: Xavier Alvarez <xavi.alvarez at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Localization] The virtue of being
fuzzy...
To: localization at lists.laptop.org
Message-ID:
<200712041015.05435.xavi.alvarez at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"

Carlo,

On Monday 03 December 2007 16:09, Carlo Falciola
wrote:
CF> Xavier,
CF> I completely agree with you regarding the need of
CF> discussing at least some terms:
CF> my very first candidate is "Mesh Network" also to
rule
CF> out if needed not to translate those "critical"
terms.

Personally I've translated it as "Red Malla" or "Red
en/de Malla" 
which is a bit redundant. When in doubt, I usually hit
Wikipedia 
and then follow the links into Spanish...

CF>
CF>
CF> Another topic that I think needs a "global"
approach
CF> is "Journal" and even more "keep" related to the
CF> journal itself.

I *strongly* recommend every translator to read the
OLPC Human 
Interface Guidelines [1]. That way you will always be
better 
prepared to translate the *meaning*.

For example, in the Journal section, it states that: 

"The traditional "open" and "save" model commonly used
for files 
will fade into abstraction ... a much more general
notion of what 
it means to want to keep things prevails." [2]

For me that implies that whenever I encounter a "save"
in the 
original text, it should be translated as a "keep"
because the 
intended user experience deprecates the concept of
"saving a 
file" (developers don't always follow the HIG ;)


Cheers,
Xavier

[1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/HIG
[2]  
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Laptop_Experience/The_Journal



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