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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: Improving KDE with translators
From:       Gérard_Delafond <gerard () delafond ! org>
Date:       2004-08-19 13:47:08
Message-ID: 200408191547.08998.gerard () delafond ! org
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Le jeudi 19 Août 2004 13:30, Erik K. Pedersen a écrit :
> Torsdag 19 august 2004 05:26 skrev Gérard Delafond:
> > Please, when you find some abnormal string in po files, or a strange
> > behavior of the app when testing your translation (I suppose you all do
> > it ?), REPORT IT !!!
>
> Well as far as I know there is more or less one person doing the Swedish
> translations. 
Incredible !
> I have been doing the Danish translations almost alone for 
> quite a long time,
Bravo !
> but am now getting some help. There is no way what you 
> ask for can be done. And you are also wrong. 
Perhaps
> It is more important that the 
> translation is 100% with a few mistakes than having an 80% translation that
> is perfect.
Big debate.
Tell the developers some parts of their job gets crap because of translators, 
I think you won't make them happy !
> We are trying to help the people who don't understand the 
> English messages, so what good is an 80% translation.
Do you help people when you translate "Open" by "Close" ?
> I get reports about 
> errors in translation and then I correct them. And what else should one
> translate ??? to than to ???. 
One should verify what this string really makes.
I don't say you did a bad job translating ??? by ??? (all the teams did it, 
including mine).
I say it's a pity that among 50 persons who translated this erroneous string, 
nobody did make some verification.
> It is also very cumbersome to find out who to 
> contact when a string does not make sense, and there is no way I have the
> time for that.
bugs.kde.org
>
> Erik
What you say looks a bit frightening.
You mean that most of the translation teams don't run the apps ?
My experience is that "blind translations" is the best way to be wrong.
Example : how do you translate "Display options" ?
Are there some options about display, or will you display some options ?

I think it is important KDE teams knows how translations are done.

I asked some time ago there would be a warning in documentations about the 
possibility of mistakes in the translation.
I think the problem is more severe : there should be a warning in all KDE.
For example, when choosing a language, there sould be a label or a message box 
saying : "KDE is written in English - Nobody knows if the translation you are 
about to use is good - Continue - Cancel".

My aim is not to devaluate the very difficult job of KDE translators. This job 
is VERY useful, and I am happy developers do so much for us (developing 
Kbabel, maintaining i18.kde.org, etc.)

But everybody should know they are using a translation nobody tested, and 
should be given a way to revert it easily.

I am getting a new idea : as it is impossible for developers to know if the 
translations are good, there should be some criteria to classify the 
"possibly good" and "possibly bad" translations, and showing it somewhere.

The reason why I asked people would make some screenshots of their translated  
apps in the docs is this way, I am sure they had a mean to chek their 
translation is correct. Perhaps after making the screenshots, there will 
still be some errors, but much less.

Hope you won't be sad, I am not attacking anybody, I am only looking for some 
methods to improve the global quiality of KDE.

Cheers

Gerard

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