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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Translating of jokes in programs.
From:       Claudiu Costin <claudiuc () kde ! org>
Date:       2002-04-28 7:31:14
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   Dear friends,

  IMO promoting and allowing jokes on KDE project
managed packages is unprofessional. Let's face it.
Smileys, jokes and english word expressions/combinations
(which don't have i18n & cultural equivalent) are 
bad thinks. 

  Smileys - these make your program look like a toy even 
is very powefull and a serious thing.

  Jokes - There's nothing bad like jokes. As programmer and
sysadmin I like _some_ jokes found in _some_ programs, but
when it come that a nice graphical application is used 
by Joe Average and very possible with a MS Windows background,
then jokes just make _some_ KDE apps look dumb. These things 
are not fiction, but crude reality. 

 English word games - altough for english speakes these are 
nice and relaxant, looking from i18n and cultural point of view
are almost untranslatable (pointed past few mails ago).


  Function names - Still are i18n messages which contain function
names in their error messages. How we supose users will get feedback
on these "foobar() method was making bla bla..."? Was pointed some
months ago on kde-devel that an error code and _short_ descriptive
message can be good for unusual and unexpected error messages. That
ways tons of i18n-fied error messages repeating again and again will
strip down the growing number of PO messages.  



On Vin 26 Apr 2002 14:19, Thomas Diehl wrote:
> Am Freitag, 26. April 2002 13:04 schrieb Malcolm Hunter:
> > > Am Freitag, 26. April 2002 10:30 schrieb Piotr Szymański:
> > > > How should we handle jokes in translations?
> > > >
> > > >From the perspective of the German team the answer is simple: We
> > > > usually
> > >
> > > don't translate them at all. We are trying to give a technical, sober,
> > > matter of fact overall impression of KDE and don't think that funny
> > > stuff really belongs there. We also do not use personal strings
> > > (programs saying
> > >
> > > "I" or "me"). Exceptions are possible, of course. Usually in games and,
> > > maybe, in some edu programs. But this is strictly a German perspective.
> > >
> > > > I would like to know
> > > > what is your view on this. Are there any directives/outlines from the
> > > > kde-i18n coords?
> > >
> > > Since there wasn't a real consensus on "KDE style" beyond the draft at
> > > http://i18n.kde.org/doc/content.html yet I don't think we should tell
> > > try and tell the teams how to handle this. Esp. since user expectations
> > > vary a
> > >
> > > lot between different countries and cultures. In the US for example the
> > > style of many technical books is a lot more casual then in most
> > > European countries. Things will differ again in African an Asian
> > > environments. We should not try to level out our cultural differences.
> >
> > This is something I am working on. Please can you report these types of
> > messages to kde-doc-english so the proof reading team can correct them.
> >
> > We want to avoid jokes, "I", "me", "my", etc. and emoticons (eg. :-) ).
>
> I guess this is about documentation only? Or are you going after the GUI
> strings as well? ("Danger, Will Robinson!" is still there, although I think
> we really need that one as a warning example. ;-)
>
> Which brings up the inevitable question: what is the status of the
> directory -> folder transition? Any chance that we are going to see this in
> 3.1?
>
> Thomas


kind regards,
-- 
Claudiu Costin, claudiuc@kde.org
Linux-KDE Romania http://www.ro.kde.org


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