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List:       kde-doc-english
Subject:    Re: [kde-doc-english]Attn all: Markup Changes
From:       Eric Bischoff <e.bischoff () noos ! fr>
Date:       2002-01-28 9:56:40
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Le Dimanche 27 Janvier 2002 16:48, Mike McBride a écrit :
> > As you know, the German team is not only removing puns and jokes but
> > also all personal strings, most exclamation marks, and other
> > indications of "subjectivity" from GUI and doc files in their
> > translations. Sometimes this amounts to sort of of re-writing the whole
> > thing in order to achieve the consistent "matter-of-fact" style we want
> > for _all_ German KDE texts.
>
> As a documentation writer, my big concern would be that if my
> documentation was "rewritten" but my name was still at the top of the
> documentation as the writer. I would want to know the extent of the
> changes so that I could either accept the rewrite (posibly even changing
> the english version to be more consistant), or have my name pulled from
> the documentation.

This is not possible (unless a COMPLETE rewrite), because of the FDL licence 
that protects you. But yes, it's true, all docs here are rewritten, fixed, 
reworded, proofread, etc. This does not deprive you of your rights as an 
author. (If you want some section unchanged by third parties, you have even 
the possibility to mark it as an 'invariant section' - but I would discourage 
this practice).

I someone removes any contributor from a "credits" list, please let it know 
publicly and I grant you that the criminal gets thrown to the public advenge.

Here, we were merely speaking about removing signs of subjectivity in the 
text itself. Usually, it's more the application developpers that are keen to 
introduce jokes, personal thoughts, "I think..." wordings, etc. The editors 
here usually don't do that.

> I think that translation teams that are making *major* changes to
> content need to contact the documentation author(s) and let them know
> the scope of changes that are being made.

We translators never touched so far any original (English) doc, these were 
only proposals. The German team and a few other ones tend to "translate and 
embetter the translation", but I've always been against this practice, we 
already had many discussions with Thomas about this, without ever reaching an 
agreement. That's life.

> Now if I have misunderstood, and what you meant by "rewriting" was that
> you simply changed the writing style, but have not signifigantly altered
> the content, then I am less concerned.

Even when "embettering the translation", the Germans never significantly 
changed the contents, I can reassure you.

> > I'd be very much in favor of including some guidelines on this in the
> > mission statement of the proof reading team.
>
> I agree. Guidelines that are publicly viewable are much better then each
> of us having guidelines of our own.

100% agree.

> > Of course, they wouldn't
> > have to be as strict as in the German team (after all, many people
> > think personal strings and a certain amount of "subjectivity" is an
> > important feature of KDE).
>
> I think it is just as important to remember that different documentation
> is aimed at different audiences.  In my opinion, the documentation
> included with kwuftpd should be very different then the documentation
> that should be included with ktron (as an example).  One is an
> application that will often be used in an enterprise environment where a
> more professional style is apprpriate (as well as a more technical
> content).  The other is a game which should not impact a business
> environment (if your boss doesn't care you play KTron, he won't probably
> be too upset by the documentation for KTron). Additionally, KTron is
> supposed to be fun, and its documentation should encourage people to
> have fun with it.

I don't really think they need much encouragement from the doc people ;-). 
But to some extent yes kdegames is an exception.

> > But we should at least replace the insider jokes ("Danger,
> > Will Robinson"),
>
> True.  But it can be difficult to find a truly universal example.  In
> the case where it is simply an example (as above), the example could be
> internationalized to fit the sensibilities of each translation team.

No, believe me, this one sentence is a nightmare to translate. Better avoid 
it. And it's not the only sentence in that case. Even "your mileage may vary" 
puzzled every translation team so far. Too dialectal expressions do not help, 
really.

> Many American audiences prefer examples which are not as dry as "This is
> a warning message".

I'm not American, but I doubt that "Danger, Will Robinson" adds a 
professional touch to a document.

> > incomprehensible tech talk ("Enter the path to the socket
> > created by the entropy gathering daemon"), and the "trademark
> > variations".
>
> These are obviously problems, and I would hope that anyone (proofreader,
> translator, reader, translation team leader, etc) who found these errors
> would point them out to me so I could rewrite/remove them.

Yup.

> What is most concerning to me about this discussion so far, is that as a
> documentation writer, I receive less than 1 message every 3-4 months
> from someone about my documentation.  I am writing in a relative vacum,
> and now I find out that possibly some translation teams have been
> bothered by examples, writing styles, etc.  Why has no one spoken up on
> the list recently?  I am open to comment and criticism, and would
> actually enjoy some feedback on what is written. So please, don't just
> grumble while you translate. Instead give writers some feedback.

Well, we were hoping that this was positive feedback and not ranting ;-). We 
appreciate your work as doc writers and proof readers, and we could never 
emphasize too much the gigantic progress in documentation quality and 
quantity that has been accomplished since you started, Mike, by you, Lauri, 
and all other kde-i18n-doc team members.

(and to be honest, we translators too lack of feedback and rewarding *sigh* 
so I know how you can feel)

> If you think something is inappropriate, let them know.  Lets keep the
> discussion on these subjects going so that documentation can be better
> each release.

We'll try to keep that in mind.
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