(no need to cc, as I read -i18n) On Τρίτη 14 Ιούνιος 2005 08:28, Scott James Remnant wrote: > At the disk of being confrontational, I actually don't agree with > either of you. I think it's important that the English messages in > dpkg be good, clear English. I do not believe that this should be > sacrificed for the sake of making it easier for non-English > speakers -- that's what the entire i18n effort is for, providing > those people with their own native language version.
I agree completely on this, that's why I sent the message. But by definition, good clear English, is almost always directly translatable and with good results. This particular message however fails to be identified as good clear English, IMHO. > I'm not sure what your point is here? If there's no direct word in > your language, isn't choosing a synonym exactly what you ordinarily > do? That's a pretty common word in British English, and "dict" > provides many definitions (including the jargon file) that should > be useful for translations. Perhaps that's a common word in 'spoken' British English, I can't know this, but I have read hundreds of books both in literature and in science (computer & physics) and I have yet to see this word in there. Maybe I have the wrong set and this word is found abundant everywhere else... Also, FWIW, I prefer British English over American English. > So in effect, I agree that "X is not a clear English message" is a > valid bug; and I agree that "this string is incomplete, and not > translatable" is a valid bug (cf. "unable to %s"); but I do not > agree that "I can't translate this because I don't understand the > English" is a bug -- that's what dictionaries are for. Well, while I'm not a native English speaker, I believe I'm quite proficient in it. If I can't understand one phrase, then I'm curious what a typical user with an average knowledge of English would understand from this message... But anyway, I certainly agree with Christian on this one, you should work on dpkg development which is much more important and not waste your time on such time consuming tasks, which are 2nd priority anyway. Someone, preferably a native English speaker as Christian suggested should scan the strings for potential bad use of English. Konstantinos
