On Friday 09 March 2007, Steve Langasek wrote: > Can I ask why a number of sentences in the English text that were phrased > as requests have been turned into questions in the translation?
sure, basically that's the result of a discussion on debian-l10n-dutch back in september 2003. Brief overview of the consensus in that discussion is that: - the literal translation of the "Please select/enter ..." (which we started with) has to formal a connotation for most people, making it sound weird when written (at least in most places, that's less so in the middle of a paragraph). - Leaving out the please in the translation is also undesirable as that makes it an imperative, where it's a polite request/gentle direction (when speaking you'd add inflection to make that clear, but that is obviously not possible in writing) -> the best solution in most cases seems to be to make it a question form I'm curious, and a bit puzzled though. gcide defines request as: 1. The act of asking for anything desired; expression of desire or demand; solicitation; prayer; petition; entreaty. [1913 Webster] so I would expect going from request -> question would be a style issue mostly, but since you asked about it I'm guessing there's some subtle difference to a native speaker? -- Cheers, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)
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