On Oct 6, 4:54 pm, Malcolm Tredinnick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This has been an interesting thread to watch from a process point of > view. Good to see some convergence on a single version and a discussion > of the rationale. Yeah, perhaps we should have some sort of triage process of translations, when there's more than one translator for given language? That way we can ensure a much higher quality.
[...] > > Lade is more formal indeed, but I don't feel that we should use > > colloquial language in a translation, as you note further down, it > > should feel as if it was written in Swedish from the start, not > > translated. I for one suggest we use formal language, because it's the > > most neutral, and Svenska Akademiens ordbok lists lade as the proper > > version, and la as the more colloquial one: > > Different countries are going to have different standards here (and it's > good that there seems to be a good reference in Sweden). If in doubt, > it's reasonably standard practice to err towards a more formal tone in > message text. This makes the program(s) suitable for use in all > environments without causing unnecessary offense or discomfort at using > an inappropriately familiar tone. Lade vs. la is really only about written and spoken language, but like every other word where the written and spoken language differs too much, the spoken version starts to creep into being the written one as well, and we have a revised language. Thusly, it is okay to write 'la,' i.e., it's accepted, but sooner or later somebody's going to notice it and yeah, why not just fix it. > Previously on this list (as Ludvig no doubt remembers), we've had the > discussion about formal or familiar versions of "you" (using the formal > version is preferred, appeared to be the consensus). Same logic applies > to these cases. There's a problem with that, because Swedish does have more polite forms than what we're using, but it's hard to explain in English because "you" means both you as in one second person, and you as in a whole group of second person. Many other languages have separate words for that, Swedish having "du" for one, "ni" for many. The issue is that "ni," which is referring to a group, can be used to a single person but then suddenly gets politeness bonuses. You used to do this to royalties, and I'm sure you still do, but it isn't used very much. My rule of thumb there goes, "Have you seen it in Microsoft's translations?" - because quite frankly, I find it that Windows has a very natural Swedish for the most of it. (And no, they use "du," the less polite form.) > Okay, so you realise the difficulties here. Just to point out difficult > this is, noun classification (by class or gender) isn't really possibly > to do in a truly multilingual fashion. The problem is that whilst, for > example, a lot of Indo-European languages are gender-based (masculine, > feminine, possibly a neutral or indeterminate class as well), this isn't > true in African languages and some Indo-Australian languages. There, > classification is a bit more role-based (e.g. animate vs. inanimate in > some cases) and that is what affects adjective endings and the like. > > To make things worse, even in the European collection, there is > contradiction. For example, sun is masculine in Latin and languages > derived from that and feminine in Germanic languages. Moon is the > opposite. There are others, but they are the two easy ones to remember > whenever I need them. > > The problem we (internationalisers and translators) are up against are > pretty large. :-) Yeah, the problem is how widely languages vary, and is most likely never going to be solved. [...] > > It'd also be nice if we could get a list of Swedish translators, I > > think we're about 3-4 now, those I know are me, mr. Fedortchenko and > > mr. Lindborg. > > Agreed. :-) We've one now, django-se (mailing list) and #django.se on Freenode. > Another thing that has proven very useful on other projects I've been > involved with (GNOME and KDE being two example where this works) is to > build up a glossary document. Any time you come across a word that is > slightly tricky to translate and you have to make some decision -- even > or especially if it's slightly imperfect -- note it down so that you and > future translators are consistent. > > Ideally (and I don't know how to organise that for Django at the > moment), the different languages can at least share the common English > version, so that a new team doesn't have to first work out all the > technical terms. > > It really does help in cases where you have multiple translators working > on a project to have a "style guide". Even if the first paragraph says > something like "our main reference is the Svenska Akademiens ordbok" and > then includes the results of anything that turned out trickier than you > hoped. > > Of course, for bonus points (the lazy approach, but you can call it > "reuse") you could contact the translators from a big project like GNOME > or KDE and see if they already have a glossary or wordlist you can crib > off initially. :-) Hohum, maybe that's a good idea. Perhaps a page on the trac wiki or so? As for borrowing from GNOME/KDE, I don't know how much we'd be able to get out of that, but maybe. > Anyway, like I said, it's encouraging to see a bit of debate about the > precise wording. It gives me some confidence that the result will stand > up under scrutiny. This list is quiet enough in general that it's not a > bad place to have these discussions if you don't have your own > locale-based list. Yeah, we've now an IRC channel at #django.se as I noted earlier, for those who want support with Django but speak Swedish better, or if you just have general considerations -- though, the channel is in Swedish. -- Sincerely, Ludvig Ericson --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django I18N" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Django-I18N?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
