Gentlemen, let me explain why this translation business is so complicated. I have translated novels from English to German years ago (for earning money) and l know what I'm talking about. I have also translated a couple hundred sentences of EMC code some months ago (and never seen any of them appear in donwloadable software).
First of all, forget all that computer translating business. What comes out of these programs is barely understandable, and only if you already know what the English text meant in the first place. Most of the times automatic translations are simply ridiculous. You can test this for yourselves by re-translating the translated nonsense into English. Secondly, LinuxCNC documentation are not crime stories or love novels. Every single word of the docs may have a very specific meaning and may be of importance, which is not true with ordinary prose. This especially true when translating text that appears in screen forms, man pages or error messages. This means that as a translator you must first define an exact vocabulary where every english word is correlated to one and only one counterpart. This is sometimes very difficult because English words may be ambigous. Often it happens that for the sake of exactness you must correct sloppy definitions in the English text or find out what the author really wanted to express before you write down the first sentence. This all makes technical translations rather tedious. There is a good reason why large companies, selling consumer goods to foreign countries, have a special staff for creating instruction sheets for these languages. Thirdly, now speaking mainly for Germany, everybody learns English at school, even in elementary school. German and English are of the same origin and have somewhat similar structure and wording. This makes it easy for Germans to learn English, easier than, say, Turkish (which is the second most spoken language in Germany). English has become the language of electronics, computing and the internet as well as of the song and music business. It has become a widely known language here and so there is little need for translation of specific documentation into German. This is not true, however, for program text and error messages. Fourth, LinuxCNC is developing rapidly. Who can keep up translating all the docs, knowing that not even the English versions are completely up to date? It would be a Sisyphos task and this discourages people, me for instance. There are chances that my translation is not even read once before it has to be replaced. Fifth, considering the fact that LinuxCNC has apparently turned into a widely commercially used system in the US (I can tell from the mail group threads) which cannot work in Germany, there are not many serious users hereabouts. I would doubt that there are any others than hobbyists. It's unlikely that one of these few will take the effort and translate manuals - he'd rather stick with the English text and put his efforts on getting LinuxCNC to run. Greetings from white Germany Peter Chris Radek schrieb: > On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 11:59:11AM +0000, andy pugh wrote: > >> I wonder if it would make sense to feed the documents through an >> auto-translator? >> > > One of our primary output formats is html, and the up-to-date English > docs are on www.linuxcnc.org. If any user wants to read these through > the google translator (or any other), that's really easy. For > instance, see > > http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=es&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxcnc.org%2Fdocs%2Fhtml%2Fgcode.html > > (that file is handwritten html), or > > http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=es&u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxcnc.org%2Fdocs%2Fhtml%2Fgui%2Faxis.html > > (this one is asciidoc) > > Also, a human translator who finds an autotranslation a useful > starting point is free to do that at any time. For us to do it ahead > of time, before we even have a human translator who wants to work on > that language, just causes us headaches: we have to maintain the lousy > autotranslation which will become out of date as the English files > change, and we don't benefit from ongoing improvements in the web > infrastructure that does autotranslation. (Google told me while I > was viewing these that Chrome has auto translation built in and I > should try it...) > > Chris > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial > Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support > Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services > Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers > http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
