[Localization] [Sur] TamTam activity Spanish locales

[Chris Leonard]

On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 11:50 PM, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Chris,
> Yes that makes sense, as long as the terms chosen in English are standard
> ones that would be recognized by musicians anywhere. If students are going
> to learn names of instruments, they might as well be "real" names.  There is
> no need to "teach down" to children.  Any child is a potential serious
> musician and, certainly (we hope) a future "consumer" of music.  If they
> learn some non-standard local term they will probably need to learn the
> correct term eventually. If education is our objective, start with the real
> stuff and add the other later if you like.
> So, I might suggest a compromise. Use the standard term a musician would use
> in the local language (example violin in English = violine in German
> = バイオリン (pronounced "violin") in Japanese = violín in Spansih.... etc).  So,
> what is a "fiddle"  it is an English word for a violin played in a
> particular style.  It is still a violin.  For local folk instruments such as
> the quena  call it a quena, but you can add a description that it is a
> "flute-like instrument originating in the music of the Andes".  Similarly,
> call a churrango a churango, but describe it as a string instrument used in
> Andean music that is similar to a mandolin, (adding that it is sometimes
> made from an armadillo shell instead of wood and is tuned differently).
>  Etc...

Caryl,

I completely agree with you.  However, the question at hand is how
best to facilitate localization of the tooltips that appear when you
hover over the set of picture tiles representing the included
"instruments" in TamTam, these are a limited set of sound samples.  I
have not experimented with TamTam SynthLab, but from the strings in
the UI, it would appear to give you the ability to create and reuse
such sound samples on your own (e,g, strings having to do with the
envelope and attack rate of sounds, etc.),  Whether it gives you an
opportunity to create new samples by audio recording or only from
synthesis or if you can add tooltip names forthe  sound samples you
create, I do not know.  The existing set of samples does not appear to
contain a quena or churango,

> A good music dictionary would be helpful for some of this. The Harvard
> Dictionary of Music was the "gold standard" for this when I majored in music
> at UCLA way back in the 1950s.  It is still top rated. I don't know how many
> folk instruments from other countries will be found there, but in general,
> you couldn't go wrong with it for anything it does cover. I notice from the
> sample pages that terms from several languages are included:
> http://www.amazon.com/Harvard-Dictionary-University-Reference-Library/dp/0674011635/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309578130&sr=1-1
> Caryl

No question that many Sugar Activites could benefit from supplemental
texts and even lesson plans that specifically leverage the Activity,
but that is beyond the scope of localizing the existing strings.  The
question is often where to get such texts under suitable copyleft.
Wikipedia and sister sites are one such  source, but there may be
books beyond copyright protection (e.g. over 99 years typically)  now
in the public domain that could also be adapted and translated.  After
all, classical instruments have not changed much in the past several
hundred years.

cjl