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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Armenian Language
From:       Ashod Nakashian <armeniantranslations () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2004-05-13 19:21:16
Message-ID: 20040513192116.32376.qmail () web50101 ! mail ! yahoo ! com
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Hi!

Wow! Everyone I included in the original mail is IN.
Good start. Ok, before we dive in, a couple of things.
Let’s make sure everyone is on the KDE i18n mailing
list. I understand that Norik is having some problems
with spam. Suggestion: create a new account just for
this cause. I did that, and at the end of the day,
it’s better to check yet another mail-box then to get
lost in spam. Also, please make sure you always send a
copy of your mails to the KDE i18n Doc. mailing list
even if you have included everyone in your mail. This
way we get auto archiving and we attract other
potential volunteers. This is how I found ALL of you!
(To subscribe:
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-i18n-doc/)

I’m sure we all have ideas we want to share with each
other. To avoid redundancy, we need to be able to
archive what we discuss. For now the KDE mailing list
is just good enough. A site for Armenian-KDE is
underway at SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/).
Once approved, we will get a free web site with:
Mailing list, Forum, PHP and mySQL Database, as well
as a sandbox to compile our versions of the KDE family
remotely on the SF servers (for those who can’t
compile on their box.)

There are a few things we need to thoroughly discuss
before we get to KBabel. If you ask me I think a main
goal of this project is to make our efforts reusable
in other Armenianization (I heard it first from
Anoush) projects. As such, we need to make our
translations (and transliterations) available in an
easy-to-use glossary-like form. Also, we need to
create a system where it is easy for any new-comer to
make contribution without going through brain damage.
I think it would be best if we make our "glossary"
editable by anyone, and we commit the changes to the
PO files ourselves. This way anyone can make a change
(what will be called a suggestion) but only the
drivers (those who would commit the changes and post
the translated PO’s) can make the changes permanent.

Yes, we need to contact the MandrakeLinux
Armenianization team. Also, another team was (still
is?) working on OpenOffice Armenianization. They (He?)
have created an MS Excel file which contains all the
text which needs to be translated. I think this
originally comes from the way OpenOffice provides all
the text used in OpenOffice to translators. Perfect
example to follow, except for the fact that it is in
Excel format.

I speak both dialects. The Eastern is more "alive"
then the Western (there are region jargons, new words,
technical words...). Nonetheless, we need to have both
versions. If you ask me, I HATE the fact that we have
2 versions (thanks to Abovyan (or Apovian) (mid-1800s)
and the Soviet-influenced changes (1921) it is much
harder to unite them back!) My first choice would be
to have an "International" Armenian version. Yes, it
is very doable, we use neither. Rather we use the old
Armenian grammar. But that’s not very practical, and
it would confuse those who can’t really read it, like
the school kids.

What are the differences?  Well, there are 3 main
differences: Spelling, Grammar and Vocabulary &
Transliteration.

Spelling: The words ending with ‘-tiun’ are written
differently. In Western they are written using the
‘Ini’ letter (as in Leej - lake in Armenian,) where in
Eastern it’s written using the Yiun letter (as in the
first letter of hisus - Jesus in Armenian.) Another
difference is in the way ‘-ian’ is written. Western
uses Yetch (as in Yerevan), eastern Yiun. (The
Soviet-Russians really needed to break
Armenia-Diaspora relations by changing the family
names, only on paper.) There are a few other
differences.

Grammar: The most notable differences are in the way
verbs are conjugated. Western use the more correct
form of "ge" + verb, where the eastern use verb +
"oum". Another difference is in the use of "from". The
Western end words with "en" and the Eastern with
"its." There are a few other differences such as the
way phrases are formed. This is mostly because of the
grammatical differences, but also because of the
influence of foreign languages on both dialects.

Vocabulary and Transliteration: There are a few
differences in the vocabulary as well, such as verb
to-be: "Ellal" in Western, "Leenel" in Eastern. This
extends to transliterated words. A fairly
international word such as "Information" is
transliterated in Eastern from the Russian version,
which is "Informatsia." Another problem with
transliteration is when you have to choose between the
letters pronounced equally in Western but not eastern.
Most notably the letters D and T ("House" becomes
"Doon" in Western and "Toon" in Eastern) and G and K
("Possible" becomes "Garely" in Western and "Karely"
in Eastern.)

These differences are more critical in documentation
translation, but not in the Menu’s and simple
sentences. That is, in simple sentences it could be
made to minimize the differences, after all, if you
don’t use much foreign (or new) words, any Armenian
who studied the language (or really speaks/writes in
Armenian) should understand the other dialect, no
problems. This is true in live dialogs between any
two, let alone on 3-5 word sentences on a computer
screen. The problem is of course with the vast
majority who has a hard time even identifying commonly
used words as Armenian or foreign.

Translating the Menu’s and Commands is not all that
hard. In fact, the OpenOffice team did a pretty good
job. Although they still use foreign words that could
be translated. They use "Khempakrel" for Edit and
"Oknutiun" for Help. It’s fun reading them. As for the
Mandrake team, I don’t know of the quality of their
work, but they also use foreign words such as
"Koordinator" for Coordinator (a transliteration from
the Russian version of the word.) Don’t we have
"Gazmagerbich" or "Oknagan." I bet a linguist could
suggest others to humble my own.

I think when we have to transliterate Abbreviations
and the like, we better use English letters. Names
such as "CD" can hardly be translated. Transliteration
of "CD" doesn’t help either.

The first steps that, I think, we should take is to
deal with the following:

- The Keyboard Mapping issues.
- Which font to use.
- Unicode or UTF ? (I believe KDE PO’s use UTF, but
probably not other projects)
- How to coordinate and merge the translations.
- Spread the word and reach linguists and others who
could contribute.
- Create a web site where we keep our files, with a
forum for discussion.
- How many versions of Armenian translation, and which
to start with.

>From another side, I have contacted the KDE i18n
coordinator, asking him/her to add an Armenian
Language team, but got no reply. I think we should go
ahead and get down to business. Sooner or later they
will add our team and accept our translations. I think
they will wait to see if we are serious at all or not.

That’s it, let’s hear what everyone thinks.

Cheers,
Ash

--- Shant Hovsepian <shant@superdupershant.com> wrote:
> All right sounds like we have something going at the
> moment. I guess we
> could now contact the KDE people and tell them that
> the project of
> "Armenianization" (kudos Ashod) is getting started
> again. 
> 
> I recommend that everyone interested read through
> Thomas's excellent
> Translation HowTo
> http://i18n.kde.org/translation-howto/.  We should
> then all agree on a standard font to use amongst
> ourselves, even though
> this isn't very crucial it will help.  I personally
> use Arial Unicode
> because it has characters for every unicode
> language, but if anyone
> knows of a better font we should probably use that,
> armunicode.org is a
> great resource for general information.
> 
> We should also get in touch with the Mandrake
> armenian team
> http://www.mandrakelinux.com/l10n/hy.php3 and see
> what conventions they
> used and possibly coordinate efforts.  Mandrake
> linux is a likely
> candidate for a 100% Armenian Operating System. I
> bring up the issues of
> conventions in translation because of my past
> uncertainty in some
> matters.  For example take the standard menu bar
> File Edit Format
> View.... do we translate these types of words
> directly into the their
> Armenian equivalents or do we use Armenian letters
> that when read aloud
> sound like the respective english words? I have seen
> both conventions
> used and I recall seeing a windows
> internationalization project using
> the latter convention. I guess there are other
> things we should work out
> before getting started and possibly contact others
> who have done
> "Armenianization".
> 
> Another issue that I was plagued with is the
> Keyboard Map in XFree86 for
> the armenian unicode subset.  I am not sure if this
> issue only arises on
> my system, but if anyone else has experience using
> unicode armenian
> under XFree86 and can testify against this then I
> shall investigate my
> setup further.  The default keymap is horrible I am
> not sure who set it
> up but take for example the first letter in the
> armenian alphabet 'Õ¡' it
> is mapped to the key for the english letter 'g'
> where the letter 'a'
> would've been more of a sensible choice.  This also
> brings up another
> issue because people accustomed to the armenian
> mapping under apple or
> microsoft platforms (which are much more intuitive)
> will have a
> difficult time adjusting to the linux counterpart.
> We can redo the
> keyboard mappings ourselves to make them more like
> the windows version
> on armunicode.org this will greatly speed up the
> translation process.
> 
> I was in yerevan about this time last year and
> looked everywhere for
> signs of open source computing but didn't find any
> its nice to see
> projects like opensourcearmenia.com.  As a general
> note I live in the
> states Los Angeles to be exact.  I natively speak
> the Western dialect of
> Armenian but I feel we should concentrate our
> efforts on Eastern
> Armenian that way it will be much more useful to the
> people currently
> living Armenia.  I guess we should discuss any other
> issues and
> logistics before we dive into KBabel. Thanks again
> to everyone who is
> interested in this project.
> 
> -Shant 
> 
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 06:34, Norik wrote:
> > Hello ..
> > First of all I have a trouble...
> > Since I have posted to kde i18 list, I started to
> recieve spam...
> > So, can You help me with canceling/deleting my
> posts???
> > Second...
> > Let's start to work!
> > 
> > Where we can download .po files???
> > Let's start and coordinate our work!
> >  
> > rgds
> > 
> > Norayr
> > 
> > 
> > RIjm
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 13 May 2004, Ashod Nakashian wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > Hi!
> > > 
> > > Anoush, great job with the SpiTux! I've been to
> the
> > > center a couple of times... thumbs up!
> > > 
> > > I've thought of Wiki about 2 years ago. I
> thought
> > > first let's have a team of volunteers working on
> some
> > > Armenia related stuff (tourism, info, history)
> on the
> > > english Wiki. Then start and all-Armenian one.
> Anyway,
> > > no one in my circle got hooked up (actually
> every one
> > > is busy with some project or the other.) Anyway,
> long
> > > story short, http://hy.wikipedia.org. Don't seem
> very
> > > active though, although I might add that I got
> to know
> > > about it only a few hours ago, while searching
> for
> > > Armenian translations of Open-Source Software.
> Shame!
> > > Is it that new? Or people don't care to spread
> the
> > > word?
> > > 
> > > As for the benefits of Armenianization of KDE
> and the
> > > family, I think it's much more then removing
> some of
> > > the barriers. I plan on going in much more
> details
> > > when there is a site (where we can have articles
> and
> > > discussion boards and the like), but here is
> what I
> > > think in two lines.
> > > 
> > > Most users/programmers know/use English or
> Russian
> > > versions of software in Armenia. They will most
> > > certainly not change that. The new generation
> however
> > > will face a very critical problem; the language
> of
> > > choice. Currently the russian language level at
> school
> > > is not what it used to be, and for a good
> reason. The
> > > goverment is encouraging and forcing the use of
> the
> > > Armenian language for anything and everything
> formal.
> > > If the choice of having an all-Armenian desktop
> is
> > > given to the kids at school, the problem is
> mostly
> > > solved. In this case, the kids will become the
> > > maintainers of their native language-based
> systems
> > > once they become power users and/or programmers.
> > > 
> > > A project like this will most certainly bring up
> other
> > > issues and start solving them. Currently the
> technical
> > > vocabulary used by the industry here is an
> > > Englo-Russian one, that sounds more like street
> gang
> > > jargon then technical jargon. One simple reason
> is the
> > > lack of a technical reference for these words in
> their
> > > Armenian version or transliteration. A project
> such as
> > > the Armenianization (I already love this word :)
> of
> > > KDE, would create a glossary of words in,
> possibly 3
> 
=== message truncated ===



	
		
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