[Localization] introduction and comments

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

Hi Alexander,

On Dec 20, 2007 3:34 AM, Alexander Dupuy <alex.dupuy at mac.com> wrote:
> My name is Alexander Dupuy, and I just signed up as a volunteer
> translator for the XO Pootle.
>

Welcome aboard :-)


> Although I'm a native English speaker, I am pretty fluent in Spanish,
> having lived in Guatemala for several years, and worked on some
> translation project while I was there.  I also have some French and a
> little Portuguese, but these seem to be pretty well covered already, so
> I'll probably stick to Spanish translations.  My home workstation
> (Fedora 7) runs in Spanish localization so I have a fair amount of
> exposure to technical Spanish on a day to day basis (although perhaps
> this is not such a good thing :-).
>
> I ran through the "Terminology" list for Pootle suggestions - and have
> noticed that there are some messages that are translated more completely
> (or accurately) in the Update 1 files but where Terminology hasn't been
> updated.  Is there any way to automatically highlight / review strings
> from Terminology that also appear (exactly) in other .po files to check
> these for consistency?  I certainly appreciate the desire for
> consistency as I find it mildly annoying that on my workstation, one
> third of the services shut down "Parando" another third "Deteniendo" and
> another third in English...most of the time it is less noticeable since
> the different applications message don't appear right next to each other.
>

We are looking at ways through which the Terminology can be
automatically referred to while translating other projects, though I
admit that it is not much of a high priority atm.

> Although I was able to edit the Terminology stuff freely, I don't seem
> to be able to do anything more than "Suggest" on the Update 1 files and
> there is no indication that my suggestions actually were recorded (not
> that I saw anyhow).  Is this expected, are there rights my Pootle
> account (Dupuy) needs to be given to do more?
>

Yeah - the default permissions for Update 1 is restricted to suggest
only. This is on purpose, since the time window that we have is very
small, and I do not want to have unchecked strings going into the
deployments. You would probably want to approach your language admin
if you want to have submit access.

> I'm a software developer and know from experience how incomprehensible
> messages in programs can be, even in their native English.  So (although
> it is a lower priority) I would like to suggest that there also be an
> English localization that would allow localization efforts to improve
> the comprehensibility of the messages in English as well as other
> languages. I realize that English may not be a target language for OLPC,
> but especially with G1G1 and perhaps some countries like Nigeria there
> will be English speaking children who use the XO.
>
> As an example of the kind of thing where this would be useful, I saw the
> following in the sugar.po Spanish translation:
>
> Keep error: all changes will be lost           Guardar el error: se
> perderán todos los cambios
>
> the problem here is that the developer is thinking of "Keep" as an
> application, and uses it as a sort of adjective to modify the noun
> "error."  The translator (and any English-speaking child, and probably,
> most adults) takes "keep" as a verb, and misunderstands the message
> entirely, which could better be translated into non-technical English as
> "Failed to keep (data): all changes will be lost" or something more like
> that.  These kinds of poor wording choices are most common in error
> messages that are rarely seen except in the source code, but can occur
> anywhere.  Ultimately, the problem is that developers think about a
> program in one way, but users think about it in another; one can try to
> educate the developers :-) but there are limits to what can be
> accomplished.  Having a child-friendlier English translation of their
> "technical English" messages can help to bridge the gap (and provide
> useful context for translators into other languages).
>


Agreed.

I have a request for all translators:
If you find a string that is hard for you to understand, or would
probably cause confusion - please bring it up on the mailing list, and
if required, post a ticket against the relevant module in Trac so that
developers can either change the string to make more sense, or add a
comment to it which aids in translation.

Thanks,
Sayamindu



-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]