From kde-i18n-doc Fri May 24 16:48:36 2002 From: Thomas Diehl Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 16:48:36 +0000 To: kde-i18n-doc Subject: Re: KDE in latin X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-i18n-doc&m=102225906610842 Am Freitag, 24. Mai 2002 16:51 schrieb Rob Kaper: > On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 09:20:35AM -0700, John Knight wrote: > > I second Malcom's opinion there, as Latin is at least still spoken in > > Vatican City and is learnt by university students for langauge reason= s, > > I'd be willing to make an allowance for it if I were the person runni= ng > > the show. As stated before, Latin will be included if the team can really mobilize = the=20 ressources to get their translation in a releasable shape. (See eg =20 http://lists.kde.org/?l=3Dkde-i18n-doc&m=3D101707813726133&w=3D2) So far, it looks as if they may be able to pull this off. > Klingon is also studied at universities for language reasons. Come on you are not really comparing Klingon to Latin, do you? Klingon ma= y=20 have some interest as a linguistic experiment (I won't discuss how much=20 really) but from what I see on the net it is almost exclusively a Trekkie= =20 thing and by no means a basic requirement for being a Trekkie. I see no=20 indication that this is going to change in the future either. In comparis= on,=20 Latin is the very basis of some of the biggest existing languages, is sti= ll=20 taught to millions of pupils and students all over the world and -- peopl= e=20 may like it or not -- it is one of the main roots of western culture as a= =20 whole. Also the translation the Latin team is doing here will probably be= =20 actually used by them, and I mean seriously. A Latin translation is surely a borderline case for KDE but as long at it= is=20 the only item in this class I don't see the necessity for opening an extr= a=20 module for "ancient languages" or some such. If we get Sanskrit, Ancient=20 Greek, or Anglo-Saxon one day we should probably reconsider. > Anyway, to end this discussion: we'll work in kdenonbeta for now and on= ce > we have a significant amount translated I will bring up this topic agai= n. I > believe that once a fair share has been translated the arguments for > inclusion become a lot strong and some of the arguments against will ha= ve > been dismissed. Just to recap the reasons for the rejection: * Like your stated yourself: Klingon is not meant for distribution any t= ime=20 soon which is the very basis for even _thinking_ about inclusion of any=20 language in the first place * The minimum requirement for inclusion in _releases_ are fully translat= ed=20 kdelibs.po + desktop.po + ~75% of kdebase (okay, there are exceptions but= =20 they should offer a good reason why to include them anyway) * KDE is based on Unicode. The Klingon glyphs were rejected for inclusio= n. So=20 there's no foreseeable end to your "roman" alphabet workaround. Which mea= ns=20 that even as a linguistic experiment it will always remain half-baked. * It is at least worth a serious thought whether the inclusion of Klingo= n=20 would make us look so silly as to give us a real image problem with a lot= of=20 users. If we accept Klingon why not "Redneck Language"? (No joke, see=20 http://lists.kde.org/?l=3Dkde-i18n-doc&m=3D94736760407863&w=3D2) Or any o= ther=20 supposedly "funny" dialect? Nothing against fun projects (after all AMOR is still one of my personal=20 favorites in KDE) but I'd rather keep them away from the main modules. An= d,=20 no, I don't think you can compare that to the worldwide Esperanto communi= ty,=20 either. Regards, Thomas --=20 KDE translation: http://i18n.kde.org Deutsche KDE-Uebersetzung: http://i18n.kde.org/teams/de